Pro player Green, an Atlanta Falcons defensive stalwart, fades back to take a pass at writing a football novel and is sacked. All-American hunk and defensive lineman Clay Blackwell's got it all: a beautiful, sensitive, loyal college sweetheart and a six- million-dollar contract as befits the first-round draft choice of the hapless Birmingham Ruffians, a recent expansion franchise. Only the Ruffians aren't slated to be laughingstocks any longer. Ruthless owner Humphrey Lyles has hired equally ruthless new head coach Vance White, who believes in performance-enhancement drugs. At first good guy Clay won't go along—but becoming coach White's whipping boy, he caves in. Meanwhile, assistant coach Gavin Collins, token black on the staff, tries to buoy Clay's spirits when he's benched; and veteran Mad Max Dresden introduces Clay to pro football's perks—wild parties, cocaine, freebie trips, etc. A dream season ensues. An NFL first, the expansion Ruffians win game after game and are in the hunt for a Super Bowl berth. The Ruffians are lionized by the media and their fans. Clay is so overwhelmed that he barely feels the loss of his girlfriend. And if steroid use has caused Clay's hair to fall out and his back to be ravaged by acne, it seems a small price to pay. Then Max suffers a heart attack and dies, forcing Clay to rethink his priorities. He flees the team, reconciles with his girl, and decides to take the two million he's earned thus far and run. Except that Clay's agent, as slimy as Boss Lyle and Coach White, says that he'll forfeit all through breach of contract. No choice, back goes no-longer-humble Clay. The ensuing resolution is right out of Prince Valiant. Dime-novel characters, gloppy dialogue, and sex-by-the-numbers make for a drab outing—zero yards gained, zero points scored.
Pub Date: Sept. 14, 1993
ISBN: 1-878685-78-3
Page Count: 298
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1993
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
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
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