Gothic Sturm and Drang by British scholar Holland, whose first novel tells how a 19-year-old Lord Byron becomes emperor of the planet's vampires. In today's London, Rebecca Carville, her auburn hair spilling and aglow, searches for Byron's lost papers: and, entering the tomb of her relative Lord Ruthven, is gripped by weird forces that lead her to Byron himself, still alive. Byron tells her the story of his induction as Lord of the Dead in Albania, where he slew the previous Lord, Vakehl Pasha, and unwittingly took on the mantle of top bloodsucker. Byron, in the tale he tells, falls for Vakehl's slave HaidÇe, who dies, or so Byron thinks as he mourns her throughout his return to England. As his own physical beauty coarsens amid riotous bloodlettings, Byron finds that the only way to get on the wagon again is to drink the ``golden'' blood of his own child or of a family member such as his half-sister Augusta, a horror he resists despite his incest with her and his convulsive appetite. Back on the Continent, he tries to draw Shelley into his empire, but Shelley would rather drown . . . . As a genre work, this is better than many. Holland's Byron is a manic-depressive whose bouts of despair—often on horseback and draped with rain and storm—are indistinguishable from the mercurial moods of the usual 19th-century Romantic hero. Style and storytelling both hit their stride as Byron sinks more deeply into his vampirism and as happy inventions arise from his subconscious: When visiting the fields of Napoleon's defeat at Waterloo, the poet finds himself viewing ragged ghost battalions at war as he walks through soggy earth still pumping with blood. Attractive figures in living pasteboard, yes, but a sequel seems likely, as long as Byron still lives and longs to escape eternity. (First printing of 75,000; Book-of-the-Month Club alternate; Quality Paperback Book Club featured alternate; $100,000 ad/promo)
Pub Date: Feb. 1, 1996
ISBN: 0-671-53425-4
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Pocket
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 1995
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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