As mysteries unfold, so does a loving portrait of small-town life, both on and off the reservation, but not in the way we’re...
A masterful tale that combines the wit of Sherman Alexie with the old-fashioned storytelling of Olive Ann Burns.
When Tecumseh and older cousin Lum witness a woman throwing a suitcase from a cliff into the Shield River, and then following it with herself, the small mysteries begin. The body is found, the suitcase not. Then Soldier, Tecumseh’s dog and best friend, finds a child’s skull with a hole and a red ribbon. Son of a practical mother and a dreaming, sometimes drinking, mostly scheming father, Tecumseh lives in the contemporary flux made up of the two towns of Truth and Brightwater, one in Montana and one in Canada—and one an Indian reservation—separated by the glacial Shield River. He also lives in his own flux between childhood and adulthood, and in another between his separated parents. Dad augments his living as a carpenter, with schemes no odder than the government’s—smuggling hazardous bio-waste across the border, for example—and Mom’s a beautician. During the long days of summer, Tecumseh wanders back and forth between them, Soldier nearly always at his side. Lum is his second best friend, a top-flight runner in training for the contest that will cap the annual end-of-summer Indian Days Festival. Tecumseh’s aunt, Cassie, makes one of her many returns, but this time, mysteriously, she doesn’t leave (together, she and Mom carry a multitude of secrets). Also returning is Monroe Swimmer, Famous Indian Artist, the reservation’s most notable son and once a close friend of Tecumseh’s father. Tecumseh takes a “job” with Monroe, who has bought the old Methodist church and is painting it—a magical trompe l’oeil—into oblivion.
As mysteries unfold, so does a loving portrait of small-town life, both on and off the reservation, but not in the way we’re accustomed to seeing in contemporary Native American fiction: King (Green Grass, Running Water, 1993), more interested in being human first and Indian second, accomplishes his aims without “characters” of mystic eccentricity, violent guilt, racism and self-loathing, and alcoholism being upfront and center.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2000
ISBN: 0-87113-818-2
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Atlantic Monthly
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2000
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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