This is an author who knows a lot about New York—and actually finds a few fresh new ways to look at the overly studied...
Will suburbanite beauty editor and thug poet find romance in the big, fashionable city?
The first thing newcomer Williams—beauty editor at TeenPeople and late of YM, Elle and many another fizzy magazine—makes sure readers know is how easy her beauty editor protagonist Billie has things. Twenty-six-year-old Billie’s perfect buppie life is hardly interrupted by her average day at Du Jour magazine, where she gets swamped in designer product samples, gets invited to parties to launch them, and occasionally writes a few words about said products. Williams knows this world and has it down cold, but, atypically for a roman à clef, doesn’t seem intent on settling scores. The better parts here follow Billie through the downtown Manhattan scene with her strange, spoiled sorority and limn the frisson that’s created as she and her two best friends become successful, upwardly mobile black women in an otherwise lily-white world. Though Williams would have done better to stick to this world and watch Billie find her way through it, she unfortunately slaps a silly romance into the middle of everything. Thus Billie falls head-over in love with Jay, a gorgeous slam poet who came up the hard way in the projects and now has his own off-Broadway hit show—like a lethally talented combination of Savion Glover and DMX. The couple’s love is soured by the fact that Jay has an old girl on the side, a happening hairdresser who, coincidentally, is also the subject of Billie’s next big feature. By the time the soapy climax arrives, any glimmer of verisimilitude has long disappeared.
This is an author who knows a lot about New York—and actually finds a few fresh new ways to look at the overly studied city—but has little of interest to say when it comes to people and love.Pub Date: May 24, 2004
ISBN: 0-399-15201-6
Page Count: 264
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2004
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
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.
Sisters work together to solve a child-abandonment case.
Ellie and Julia Cates have never been close. Julia is shy and brainy; Ellie gets by on charm and looks. Their differences must be tossed aside when a traumatized young girl wanders in from the forest into their hometown in Washington. The sisters’ professional skills are put to the test. Julia is a world-renowned child psychologist who has lost her edge. She is reeling from a case that went publicly sour. Though she was cleared of all wrongdoing, Julia’s name was tarnished, forcing her to shutter her Beverly Hills practice. Ellie Barton is the local police chief in Rain Valley, who’s never faced a tougher case. This is her chance to prove she is more than just a fading homecoming queen, but a scarcity of clues and a reluctant victim make locating the girl’s parents nearly impossible. Ellie places an SOS call to her sister; she needs an expert to rehabilitate this wild-child who has been living outside of civilization for years. Confronted with her professional demons, Julia once again has the opportunity to display her talents and salvage her reputation. Hannah (The Things We Do for Love, 2004, etc.) is at her best when writing from the girl’s perspective. The feral wolf-child keeps the reader interested long after the other, transparent characters have grown tiresome. Hannah’s torturously over-written romance passages are stale, but there are surprises in store as the sisters set about unearthing Alice’s past and creating a home for her.
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.Pub Date: March 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-345-46752-3
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2005
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