An impressively intelligent and buoyantly written novel.
A fictionalized diary of real-life socialite Kathleen Agnes Kennedy (1920-1948) offers her thoughts on family, geopolitics, and love.
The narrator, nicknamed “Kick,” is born into extraordinary wealth and privilege as part of the Kennedy family. In this depiction, she’s shown to be a precocious observer of human affairs from an early age. When her father, Joseph P. Kennedy Sr., is appointed ambassador to Great Britain, she moves with him to London and rubs shoulders with the likes of Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, Winston Churchill, and the British royal family. Her dad, however, is an “outspoken anti-Semite” who tries to convince Jewish, anti-Nazi Hollywood producers that gentile Americans would blame Jewish people for dragging the country into a bloody conflict abroad. He also gullibly believes Adolf Hitler’s empty promises of peace and is a political adversary of both Churchill and President Franklin D. Roosevelt, who furtively collaborate to bring the United States into the war. Kick has no illusions about Hitler’s dangerousness: “Hitler tests my faith in a just God,” she writes. She falls in love with Billy Cavendish, the “heir to the richest duchy in England,” but their relationship is vigorously opposed by both families on religious grounds—his family is Anglican and hers, Catholic. When Billy dies in the war, Kick is crushed by despair, although she eventually falls in love again, with handsome and charming British noble Peter Fitzwilliam. Throughout this account, Braudy (Family Circle, 2004, etc.) deftly captures her subject’s lacerating wit and charming forthrightness. After her wedding night, for instance, Kick writes, “Needless to say, certain things can only improve. It is the most important night of my life.” The author also ably chronicles Kick’s work for American spy chief Gen. “Wild Bill” Donovan, who asked her to keep tabs on and distribute “fake gossip” to “commie sympathizers” in England. Overall, Braudy portrays her as a remarkably accomplished and daring woman, especially for the age. Kick also works as an editor and writer for the Washington Times-Herald, and readers can see, in her diary, the pithy humor, gimlet-eyed observation, and authorial concision that make up good journalistic writing as well as her confidence in espousing heterodox views. Braudy also provides what feels like an intimate look at the intramural squabbles and tensions of the Kennedy family; of particular interest is Kick’s devotion to her father despite his considerable character flaws, including incorrigible philandering, tyrannical impulses, parochial closed-mindedness, and mercurial anger: “How can I love Daddy and hate so much of what he says? Brother Johnny says it’s his Irish charm.” Further, the author poignantly shows Kick’s close, tender relationship with her aforementioned brother, future president John F. Kennedy, which included a shared political ideology. The anguish that Kick experiences when John’s life is imperiled during his military service is palpable. Braudy does a marvelous job of making readers feel as if they’re witnessing a confession that’s never seen the light of day—as if they’re truly stumbling upon a secret.
An impressively intelligent and buoyantly written novel.Pub Date: Feb. 14, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-692-16707-6
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Blanche Wolf Publishers
Review Posted Online: April 4, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.
Four men who meet as college roommates move to New York and spend the next three decades gaining renown in their professions—as an architect, painter, actor and lawyer—and struggling with demons in their intertwined personal lives.
Yanagihara (The People in the Trees, 2013) takes the still-bold leap of writing about characters who don’t share her background; in addition to being male, JB is African-American, Malcolm has a black father and white mother, Willem is white, and “Jude’s race was undetermined”—deserted at birth, he was raised in a monastery and had an unspeakably traumatic childhood that’s revealed slowly over the course of the book. Two of them are gay, one straight and one bisexual. There isn’t a single significant female character, and for a long novel, there isn’t much plot. There aren’t even many markers of what’s happening in the outside world; Jude moves to a loft in SoHo as a young man, but we don’t see the neighborhood change from gritty artists’ enclave to glitzy tourist destination. What we get instead is an intensely interior look at the friends’ psyches and relationships, and it’s utterly enthralling. The four men think about work and creativity and success and failure; they cook for each other, compete with each other and jostle for each other’s affection. JB bases his entire artistic career on painting portraits of his friends, while Malcolm takes care of them by designing their apartments and houses. When Jude, as an adult, is adopted by his favorite Harvard law professor, his friends join him for Thanksgiving in Cambridge every year. And when Willem becomes a movie star, they all bask in his glow. Eventually, the tone darkens and the story narrows to focus on Jude as the pain of his past cuts deep into his carefully constructed life.
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.Pub Date: March 10, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-385-53925-8
Page Count: 720
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PROFILES
PERSPECTIVES
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.
Life lessons.
Angie Malone, the youngest of a big, warm Italian-American family, returns to her Pacific Northwest hometown to wrestle with various midlife disappointments: her divorce, Papa’s death, a downturn in business at the family restaurant, and, above all, her childlessness. After several miscarriages, she, a successful ad exec, and husband Conlan, a reporter, befriended a pregnant young girl and planned to adopt her baby—and then the birth mother changed her mind. Angie and Conlan drifted apart and soon found they just didn’t love each other anymore. Metaphorically speaking, “her need for a child had been a high tide, an overwhelming force that drowned them. A year ago, she could have kicked to the surface but not now.” Sadder but wiser, Angie goes to work in the struggling family restaurant, bickering with Mama over updating the menu and replacing the ancient waitress. Soon, Angie befriends another young girl, Lauren Ribido, who’s eager to learn and desperately needs a job. Lauren’s family lives on the wrong side of the tracks, and her mother is a promiscuous alcoholic, but Angie knows nothing of this sad story and welcomes Lauren into the DeSaria family circle. The girl listens in, wide-eyed, as the sisters argue and make wisecracks and—gee-whiz—are actually nice to each other. Nothing at all like her relationship with her sluttish mother, who throws Lauren out when boyfriend David, en route to Stanford, gets her pregnant. Will Lauren, who’s just been accepted to USC, let Angie adopt her baby? Well, a bit of a twist at the end keeps things from becoming too predictable.
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.Pub Date: July 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-345-46750-7
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2004
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