Gear (People of the Lightning, 1995, etc.) picks up the adventures of Boston Brahman Richard Hamilton, begun in The Morning River (1996), carrying him from untested student of philosophy and priggish young gentleman of society to maturation and manhood on the virgin frontier of the American West in the 1820s. The story resumes with Richard indentured to rough mountain man Travis Hartman and obliged to work on a keelboat bound for the Yellowstone, where the boat's owner, Dave Green, hopes to establish an illegal trading post. Travis is committed to making a man of the boyish Richard, who has already proved his mettle by killing a Pawnee warrior and rescuing the beautiful Heals Like a Willow, a Shoshone mystic who's smitten by the handsome but elitist Bostonian. For the slow first half of this sequel, Richard broods over the loss of his honor owing to happenstances revealed in The Morning River (they included robbery and murder)—matters that, like the frontier around him, are at odds with his sophomoric philosophical understanding of civilization's established values. Finally, though, the plot begins to move forward with a speed that makes the ponderous first 200 pages worth the journey. Richard is bloodied and badly wounded in a pitched battle, and he finds his devotion to the memory of his Boston love, Laura Templeton, competing with his newfound affection for the Shoshone girl. Ultimately, though, Richard is saved by true love—both in Boston and in the West—and reconciles his philosophical studies with frontier and human actualities. The stage is well set for volume three. All the sterotypical Indians talk like Oxford dons, and all the rustic whites speak in dialectical frontier gibberish; but, still, Gear presents the early American West with a rare, salty accuracy of detail. The action scenes are exciting, the romance ones only marginally sentimental.
Pub Date: Aug. 15, 1997
ISBN: 0-312-86330-6
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Forge
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1997
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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