A heroine who really, really cares about politics and social issues and who always remembers to wear a warm coat is...
Superselling Isaacs (Long Time No See, 2001, etc.) makes a valiant effort to reach a younger readership and still please the faithful in her tale of a New Yorker looking for her long-lost mother.
Amy Lincoln has issues—big time. Raised by her shoplifting grandma Lil while her father, a petty crook named Chicky, was doing time, she never knew her mother, Phyllis. Where is Phyllis now? Amy never had the time to figure that out, what with going to Harvard and Columbia School of Journalism. Now working for Happy Bob, a liberal slave-driver at In Depth, a newsmagazine that takes its mission seriously, Amy’s gotten pretty good at finding out stuff people don’t want her to know. Does a charismatic political candidate who seems to be on the side of the angels have an illegitimate son by a woman of color? Looks like it, and that assignment gets her to thinking about her own mother. Surely a little routine investigation will turn up a few clues, starting with the names of her maternal grandparents: prosperous Brooklyn businessman Selwyn Moscowitz and wife Rose. Are they dead or alive or living in Florida? Boca Raton, here I come. Along the way, Amy dithers inexplicably about whether to commit to an absolutely perfect guy who would lay down his life for her (the weakest part of the story) and reminisces about her eccentric upbringing, such as it was, by her crazy-like-a-fox grandmother and the endearingly raffish Chicky (the funniest and best part of the story). Amy’s discovery of her other grandmother, a Waspy society matron, results in a face-to-face meeting that goes amazingly well; her eventual reunion with her reptilian mother does not.
A heroine who really, really cares about politics and social issues and who always remembers to wear a warm coat is certainly a welcome novelty in this Age of Fluff—but this still seems like chick-lit in sensible shoes.Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-7432-4215-7
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2004
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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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