Not half as imaginative as it may think, yet still fun in a grandly silly fashion.
Well, what other name would you give paradise?
It’s not clear exactly how to react to a debut novel that’s purportedly meant for adults yet whose first page introduces journalist Cadillac Jackson getting off the train in Soul City (where he’s been sent by Chocolate City Magazine to cover the mayoral elections) and fully intending to check out the sights that include the world-famous 100-foot Afro pick and the “crazy” sermons delivered by Revren Lil’ Mo Love. Is this the start of a bad dream that our protagonist is going to wake up from? No, dear reader, music journalist Touré (stories: The Portable Promised Land, 2002) has his story and he runs with it, for better or for worse. True enough, Cadillac keeps his clear intention of probing into the city to see what’s going on with the mayoral election, but obviously that’s really just a stratagem allowing him to tour the length and the breadth of this slice of paradise: where the biscuits are made with droplets of heaven-sent butter, the music is everywhere and always the best (Ellington, Prince, Marley), and there’s a gorgeous Jimmy Choo–wearing femme fatale by the name of Mahogany Sunflower for Cadillac to fall in love with. There’s evil, too, of course, personified in places like the nearby thug paradise of Whatevaworld and in the figure of vile billionaire tycoon John Jiggaboo. The battle for the soul of Soul City is joined only somewhat late in this thinly imagined romp, which keeps its bouncy spirit even while failing utterly to function as a racial metaphor in the manner of a Colson Whitehead or Suzan-Lori Parks, though it seems to wish to.
Not half as imaginative as it may think, yet still fun in a grandly silly fashion.Pub Date: Sept. 2, 2004
ISBN: 0-316-74158-2
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2004
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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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