A rambling but interesting debut (winner of the Milkweed National Fiction Prize) about a troubled family that comes under the influence of a drifter and his drug-dealing boss. Single mothers can—t ever expect to have an easy time of it, but single mothers who drink too much have to be prepared for the worst. Donna Bless tries hard to do right by her boys Nelson and Wesley, but she’s basically a party girl at heart and can—t resist an evening (maybe even a whole night) at a local honky-tonk whenever the opportunity presents itself. One of her partners in crime is a strange, charismatic barfly named Roy Dale, who steps in one evening when a local cowboy comes on too strong after the third beer and won—t take no for an answer. Roy flattens the sap with a single punch, then offers Maggie a chaser. The result: she falls for him head over heels. Roy offers Wesley a job working on his friend Sam Casey’s farm, good money for outdoor work in the boy’s spare time. The Casey spread was at one time a full-fledged commune and is still pretty weird to this day. Nothing much grows there but marijuana, though there’s enough of that to keep everyone busy and ensure that Sam stays in the black. Sam himself is a decent sort, somewhat addled but humane. Roy, however, turns out to be a good deal less benign than he first appeared. For one thing, he’s a thoroughgoing lush, and he’s quickly becoming a kind of surrogate father to the boys. Maggie worries about his influence on them, but she herself has become so entwined in his world of drink and drugs that she doesn—t know how to get out. Can will power and mother’s love overcome ordinary human weakness? Even when it’s overlaid with addiction? Badly organized and far too loose, but Tharp’s debut has a poignancy and grace that gets it over the bumps on its way: Worth a look.
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1999
ISBN: 1-57131-030-4
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Milkweed
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 1999
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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