Although the scenes are impeccably handled and laughs abound, the ending seems arbitrary and abrupt. This would make a great...
A young woman is recruited by her sisters to “squat” in a high-priced Manhattan co-op while they settle their inheritance claim, in playwright Rebeck’s second novel (Three Girls and Their Brother, 2008).
Rebeck’s background as a dramatist is immediately apparent in her trenchant dialogue and in the monologue-ready ruminations of her first-person narrator, Tina Finn. Tina, whose immediate past featured a trailer, a junkyard boyfriend and several arrests, learns at her mother’s funeral that she and her sisters Lucy and Alison are about to inherit the Livingston Mansion, Apt. 8A, a palatial slice of Central Park West real estate. Her late stepfather, Bill Drinan, an ailing, alcoholic recluse, had apparently inherited 8A from his first wife, Sophia. Bill left 8A to his second wife, former housecleaner Olivia, the Finn girls’ mother, whom he preceded in death by only a few months. Olivia and Bill had occupied the smallest, shabbiest rooms in 8A, and had, judging from cases of expensive red wine and vodka left behind, literally drunk themselves to death. The apartment’s formal kitchen is lined with moss cultivated by Len, the weird botanist neighbor. The apartment’s showiest rooms have stunning views but no furniture. In the wee hours, Tina is awakened from her own drunken stupor by other claimants to the property: Pete and Doug Drinan, Sophia and Bill’s sons, who grew up in 8A, have barged in to remind her that she has no legal right to occupancy. As the estate battles escalate, Tina is urged by the oh-so-controlling, tightly wound Lucy to ingratiate herself with the co-op board, who are hostile toward the interlopers, not least because Bill was (gasp!) Irish. A storeroom of poignant memorabilia, a secret passage between apartments and a ghost whose voice echoes behind the walls amp up the whimsy.
Although the scenes are impeccably handled and laughs abound, the ending seems arbitrary and abrupt. This would make a great play.Pub Date: May 1, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-307-39416-3
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Shaye Areheart/Harmony
Review Posted Online: Jan. 9, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2010
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.
Pub Date: July 11, 1960
ISBN: 0060935464
Page Count: 323
Publisher: Lippincott
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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
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