Heartwarming tale of a woman’s physical transformation and spiritual journey.
An accident victim visits heaven in her dreams.
In winter darkness, Angie Gabriel drives an Alaskan road with 7-year-old daughter Lucy in the passenger seat. After hitting a guardrail, Angie loses consciousness and dreams of heaven. Upon waking in the hospital, she finds her mother and ex-husband Mark by her side, but no Lucy. Before the accident, Mark and well-to-do wife Alice wanted custody of Lucy, being better able to care for her than financially strapped Angie who refused to give up her daughter. After her release, wheelchair-bound Angie goes home to live with her distant workaholic father and her mother, who sided with Mark and Alice for Lucy’s custody. During her recovery, Angie continues to dream of heaven. She moves into an apartment, undergoes physical therapy, uncovers details of her accident and a possible catalyst for racing through the night at breakneck speed. Through it all, she grows ever closer to Mark, who may be heading for divorce. And then comes a surprising revelation that changes Angie’s perspective. Although at times pacing lags, this is a charming story of a spunky woman doing her best to deal with a spate of life-altering events and ever-changing family dynamics. Between ex-spouses, old feelings often die hard, and the author does a fine job of portraying the off-and-on-again relationship of Angie and Mark. One of the book’s strengths lies in its contrast of an independent, mobile existence with a world of disability and dependence on others and how this translates into daily living, including interaction with strangers. Heaven as described herein is sparkling but never saccharine. As a character, Angie’s transformation is far from one-note and extends into various aspects of life, including self-responsibility for the effect her semihelpless state has on others. The novel’s end, although subject to interpretation, is nonetheless satisfying.
Heartwarming tale of a woman’s physical transformation and spiritual journey.Pub Date: Aug. 9, 2011
ISBN: 978-1461146513
Page Count: 292
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Oct. 17, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2011
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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