Clunky writing and a rabidly partisan view hobble the thrills, but not fatally.
The White House and its religious and oil industry backers pin big hopes on a tiny Christian sect in war-ravaged Iraq.
Paris-based journalist Sam Preston is the only reporter to dig deep into the mysteries surrounding the explosion that leveled a church belonging to the tiny Assyrian Christian congregation on the Rue Galande. Preston is a recovering alcoholic with great writing skills and years of useful experience covering France, which he loves. His story gets the attention of Rafat Ganjibar, the obese and grandiose self-styled leader of the Assyrians, who summons the reporter to let him know of the Assyrian hope to declare an independent state for the religious minority in Iraq. Preston doesn’t know what to make of the creepy Ganjibar, nor does he know how seriously to take the offer of his French colleague Charles Dumond to include him in the investigation of some shady arms dealing that involves a disgraced resistance hero who was once the friend of the current French president. As it turns out, the arms dealing leads back to the Assyrians. And so does Princess Tawana, an American gospel singer with a French band whose breakout hit is based on her firm belief in the prophecies laid out in the Book of Revelation. The Assyrians, Princess Tawana and the arms dealers all have ties to the administration of U.S. President Jack Ritter, who, if he weren’t so short and weren’t from New Mexico, would be a dead ringer for G. W. Bush. President Ritter, taking his marching orders from his evil vice president, whose former employer would be a dead ringer for Halliburton if the oil-exploiting conglomerate weren’t so huge and cynical, is in the grip of evangelical Christians. Those Christians, like Princess Tawana, are buckling down for Armageddon, an event they await with pleasure.
Clunky writing and a rabidly partisan view hobble the thrills, but not fatally.Pub Date: Jan. 9, 2007
ISBN: 1-59051-252-9
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Other Press
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2006
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
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
