A smart and bracing ground-level exploration of the drug trade.
A young family man escapes the Great Recession by driving marijuana cross-country, raking in good money and bad vibes.
“Drive fast and swerve a lot” is the joking advice drug dealers give mules like James, an unemployed freelance journalist who begins driving pounds of weed from California to Florida to make ends meet when he and his pregnant wife fall out of work. Of course, the job involves a stressful amount of careful attention to detail, not just to the speed limit but to the type of car, its plates and the safest routes. Some early pages shoehorn in an overabundance of detail about the legal complexities of the gig, but the book is largely a propulsive and intense journey into the degradations of living in the black market. James’ story begins in the middle of 2006, the start of the U.S. economy’s latest stumble, and as the markets collapse he takes some comfort in the large wads of cash he accumulates. But happiness is fleeting and, as D’Souza reveals, ultimately inaccessible. Sub-dealers break promises, which leads to violence; the business demands keeping secrets, which slowly drives a wedge between James and his wife. The book is a departure from D’Souza’s previous two novels, 2006’s Whiteman and 2008’s The Konkans, which focused on themes of race and assimilation, but he eases comfortably into this milieu: He’s clearly studied the mechanics of the marijuana trade, and he addresses it in ways that reject the simple moral boundaries of most cinematic portrayals of drug dealers. D’Souza captures the push and pull of James’ emotions, his paranoia and his frazzled rationalizations. James has a nerviness that makes him perfect for the gig, but it’s agonizingly clear how much he sacrificed to get it.
A smart and bracing ground-level exploration of the drug trade.Pub Date: Sept. 28, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-547-57671-8
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Mariner/Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Review Posted Online: Aug. 1, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2011
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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