More sunlit suspense with a difference from the British author of Juggling the Stars (1993). Here, a geologist turns sleuth in Greece while coping with his midlife crisis. Quartz and feldspar, phenocrysts and microfractures—the novel bristles with the language of geology. Peter Nicholson is a 40- year-old London geologist visiting a Greek island quarry. His clients, Australian developers of office space in Sydney, are suing their Greek granite supplier and want ``something really damning'' in his report on quarry procedures and conditions. Expecting to mix pleasure with business, Peter has brought along Margaret, a 22- year-old student he loves enough to contemplate deserting his wife and children. He hopes the exotic locale will seal his future with Margaret, but the picture is complicated by his wife's fax announcing another pregnancy and by his impulsive bedding of Thea, the quarry director's beautiful daughter. Apparently Peter is testing his ``resistance to shear'' to see if he'll crack like the defective stone sent to Australia. (Parks rides the geological metaphor hard throughout.) His game of chicken is interrupted by Mrs. Owen, widow of a worker killed on the construction site, here to exact revenge and enlist Peter's help. Her disappearance, followed by the theft of his report, persuades him a sinister company cover-up is under way. Displaying an integrity not seen in his relationships, Peter confronts the director and does his own detective work in a tense finale. Underneath the noise Parks is asking a provocative question: Are our partners unique? His characters exemplify different answers. For Thea men are interchangeable, but Mrs. Owen mourns her husband as ``irreplaceable.'' Peter is confused, hence his crisis. Meanwhile, these characters are also players in a suspense game. It's a complicated scheme, and Parks handles the suspense better than the relationships, never quite getting a fix on Peter. Flawed but provocative work from an always interesting writer.
Pub Date: July 1, 1994
ISBN: 0-8021-1552-7
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Grove
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1994
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
There are unforgettable beauties in this very sexy story.
Passion, friendship, heartbreak, and forgiveness ring true in Lovering's debut, the tale of a young woman's obsession with a man who's "good at being charming."
Long Island native Lucy Albright, starts her freshman year at Baird College in Southern California, intending to study English and journalism and become a travel writer. Stephen DeMarco, an upperclassman, is a political science major who plans to become a lawyer. Soon after they meet, Lucy tells Stephen an intensely personal story about the Unforgivable Thing, a betrayal that turned Lucy against her mother. Stephen pretends to listen to Lucy's painful disclosure, but all his thoughts are about her exposed black bra strap and her nipples pressing against her thin cotton T-shirt. It doesn't take Lucy long to realize Stephen's a "manipulative jerk" and she is "beyond pathetic" in her desire for him, but their lives are now intertwined. Their story takes seven years to unfold, but it's a fast-paced ride through hookups, breakups, and infidelities fueled by alcohol and cocaine and with oodles of sizzling sexual tension. "Lucy was an itch, a song stuck in your head or a movie you need to rewatch or a food you suddenly crave," Stephen says in one of his point-of-view chapters, which alternate with Lucy's. The ending is perfect, as Lucy figures out the dark secret Stephen has kept hidden and learns the difference between lustful addiction and mature love.
There are unforgettable beauties in this very sexy story.Pub Date: June 12, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5011-6964-9
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: March 19, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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