A strangely uninvolving first novel—a muted, discursive portrayal of alienation and anomie set in Belgrade in 1991—that won for its young author the NIN Prize, the ``highest literary honor'' given in the now dissolved nation of Yugoslavia. The unnamed narrator, a young husband and father-to-be, is determined to avoid being caught up in ``the Serbo-Croat mutual slaughter'' and indulges a self-conscious indolence. Despite the responses of those closest to him to events, he seems deeply insensitive to the national trauma. His wife Angela, a former drug dealer and heroin addict, abandons both her business and her habit as she enters the late stages of her pregnancy. Angela's brother Lazar, an endearingly muddled youngster with a passionate devotion to the passivity of Eastern philosophy, nevertheless declines to resist when he receives his ``call-up papers,'' and quickly becomes a casualty of the war. The narrator's friend Dejan, a promising musician, loses an arm during his military service, yet returns energized by dreams of success as a businessman. All this while the narrator—unable to share or even comprehend others' acceptance of (not to say complicity with) their fates—reacts to everything around him with a jaded sarcasm that has the surely unintended effect of making him sound priggish and heartless. It's not that Arsenijevic doesn't give him human feelings—rather that the novel seems unable to make up its mind whether it's about the slow, fitful awakening of feeling in a sluggishly self-centered soul, or if instead it means simply to present a character who simply cannot believe that any cause merits his allegiance. Either way, what results is a protagonist in whom it's impossible to take much interest, and a novel so rarefied and unspecific that it seems, despite its brevity, an ordeal to read.
Pub Date: Sept. 23, 1996
ISBN: 0-679-44657-5
Page Count: 144
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1996
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
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.
Sisters work together to solve a child-abandonment case.
Ellie and Julia Cates have never been close. Julia is shy and brainy; Ellie gets by on charm and looks. Their differences must be tossed aside when a traumatized young girl wanders in from the forest into their hometown in Washington. The sisters’ professional skills are put to the test. Julia is a world-renowned child psychologist who has lost her edge. She is reeling from a case that went publicly sour. Though she was cleared of all wrongdoing, Julia’s name was tarnished, forcing her to shutter her Beverly Hills practice. Ellie Barton is the local police chief in Rain Valley, who’s never faced a tougher case. This is her chance to prove she is more than just a fading homecoming queen, but a scarcity of clues and a reluctant victim make locating the girl’s parents nearly impossible. Ellie places an SOS call to her sister; she needs an expert to rehabilitate this wild-child who has been living outside of civilization for years. Confronted with her professional demons, Julia once again has the opportunity to display her talents and salvage her reputation. Hannah (The Things We Do for Love, 2004, etc.) is at her best when writing from the girl’s perspective. The feral wolf-child keeps the reader interested long after the other, transparent characters have grown tiresome. Hannah’s torturously over-written romance passages are stale, but there are surprises in store as the sisters set about unearthing Alice’s past and creating a home for her.
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.Pub Date: March 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-345-46752-3
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2005
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