The boys are almost too silly to believe, but Mary’s an excellent guide on the faintly ridiculous road that leads eventually...
The healthy lusts of an aimless young woman do battle with the overwrought imaginations of two young men who would be guardians of the Beat movement.
Mid-’90s suburban London is the setting, but “Jack” and “Neal” pine for midcentury America and the days of Kerouac and Cassidy in whose honor they have shed their baptismal names. Litt (Corpsing, 2001, etc.) cheekily narrates as the smart but rather at loose ends Mary, who, like Neal and Jack still lives at home despite being well past school age. Encountering the lads at what she thought would be a party, Mary stumbles into their meditation session and quickly develops a huge crush on handsome Jack while Neal gets a huge crush on her. She also makes a firm enemy of Maggie, current top chick in this tiny Beatnik revival movement. Mary, far from keen on the ’50s hipster business, is nevertheless willing to join the scene if it means being near Jack. The rules are, however, tricky and a little tiresome. Jack insists on conducting their lives as if the ’50s were still ticking, reading nothing other than the Beat canon, and even writing in that style. Soon, though, Mary realizes it is Neal who can really write. Jack does the usual Tortured Young Man stuff that morphs into wretched garage rock. She also realizes that if she’s ever to loosen Maggie’s death grip on Jack, she’ll need to capitalize on Neal’s affection for her. Which, with semi-honorable reluctance, she does. And then things get really tricky. As the only one with the use of a car, Mary is pleased to transport the lot to Brighton, where they will work on their newspaper and on the works of Otto Lang, a dead Beat poet. Maggie, furious at Mary’s participation, bails out, leaving the field clear. But the route to Jack’s loins is traveled with trusty Neal alongside all the way. Say, weren’t Kerouac and Cassidy. . . ?
The boys are almost too silly to believe, but Mary’s an excellent guide on the faintly ridiculous road that leads eventually to San Francisco.Pub Date: Dec. 1, 2002
ISBN: 0-09-926839-6
Page Count: 242
Publisher: Marion Boyars
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2002
BOOK REVIEW
A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.
Pub Date: July 11, 1960
ISBN: 0060935464
Page Count: 323
Publisher: Lippincott
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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
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