A thoughtful, elegantly written book that will particularly appeal to musicians and music fans.
Drago (Winter, 2016, etc.) departs from the horror genre in this existential tale of an ex-rocker’s late-in-life coming-of-age.
Dante Rose is currently the assistant manager at grocery store Food Castle, but he still plays local solo gigs here and there. He also obsesses about his time, eight years ago, with Thorn, a rock band that almost made it big before its lead singer, Joe Mars, left to form a new group. His wife, Penny Rose, also believed in the dream of Thorn, and the couple chose not to have children in expectation of its success—a decision that’s now eating at them both in different ways. Drago painstakingly constructs his characters, revealing information during mundane events—store checkouts, employee small talk, a poker game. Several events help to define the characters and propel them toward self-discovery: Penny finds a lump in her breast; criminals pass counterfeit bills at Food Castle; Clark Gufney, one of the employees, finds his wife cheating on him; and Dante hunts down and reconnects with his former band mates. Each storyline resonates off the others like the notes of a chord. Drago generates interest through the tension of awaiting doctor appointments and test results, the camaraderie of Dante and his fellow workers, and the unraveling mystery surrounding the band’s reunion—which, in Dante’s mind, hinges on the enigmatic Thorn destroyer and possible redeemer, Joe Mars. Throughout, the book is packed with musical minutiae, from the names of famous and obscure bands, musicians, and songs to the chord structures of Dante’s songwriting. Drago also wields character names like a literary grenadier: Dante, who journeys through his own personal hell; Thorn, the memory that’s forever stuck in his side; Mars, the militaristic force that controlled the life and death of the band.
A thoughtful, elegantly written book that will particularly appeal to musicians and music fans.Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-692-17231-5
Page Count: 276
Publisher: Gold Avenue Press
Review Posted Online: Oct. 4, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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