Educational and affecting; the importance of the author’s ongoing mission to demystify the world of mental health care...
An exploration of dissociative identity disorder, this fourth novel by Peterson (My Life in a Nutshell: A Novel, 2014, etc.) valiantly addresses the stigma of mental illness.
In the book’s opening pages, Isaac Bittman appears not unlike any other suburban father. Having returned from playing tennis with his friend Max, he starts organizing a birthday party for his young son Dominic. A sense of unease only begins to creep in when Isaac cannot recall setting up an obstacle course for the party and vehemently denies making it, until Max shows him photographs that prove otherwise. Soon, Isaac’s illness gains an uncontrollable and nauseating momentum. He does not remember his actions, and his life begins to break apart. He becomes uncharacteristically violent, loses his job, and his family life begins to suffer. His devoted wife, Reese, attempts to understand his suffering, but when Isaac disappears and is found half dead in the Idaho backwoods, it becomes desperately clear that he requires a level of care that she alone cannot provide. On being admitted to a specialist mental health facility to undergo a revolutionary form of treatment, Isaac asks the doctor: “But Dr. Charlie, what if they don’t? Get better, I mean. What if things just keep getting worse because I’m here? What if I find out things I really shouldn’t know?...I’ll be lost in a new way, a way that’s way worse than ever before.” Peterson’s language captures perfectly the uncertainty of patients facing a mental illness where all solid ground becomes unstable and threatens to give way beneath their feet. The doctor’s answer reflects the magnificent sense of hope captured in the remainder of the novel: “There are answers. Not always obvious or easy ones, but answers nonetheless.” The book proves to be dazzlingly analytical and delicately sympathetic in equal measure. The strength of Peterson’s My Life in a Nutshell lay in its realism and the author’s ability to deftly construct complex psychological portraits. More of the same is offered here, although it appears that the author is even closer to her subject and is able to say to the reader in earnest: this is mental illness, this is how it feels. Few writers possess the courage or working knowledge to draw back the veil on this still largely taboo subject. Peterson possesses this rare talent.
Educational and affecting; the importance of the author’s ongoing mission to demystify the world of mental health care should not be overlooked.Pub Date: May 1, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-62720-105-6
Page Count: 394
Publisher: Apprentice House
Review Posted Online: May 6, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2016
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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