Marginally less wonderful, then, than The Colony of Unrequited Dreams (1999). But all that means is that it’s merely better...
The contrast between men’s publicly declared dreams of exploration and discovery and the secrets they withhold from the world: it’s this that drives the sixth novel from the prizewinning Canadian author (The Divine Ryans, 1999, etc.).
In familiar Johnston territory—his native Newfoundland—near the end of the 19th century, Devlin Stead addresses us in a voice characterized by Dickensian urgency and warmth. He lives with his doting Aunt Daphne and brusque (paternal) Uncle Edward, following the desertion of his family by Devlin’s father Francis Stead, a physician whose experiences of Arctic exploration continue to draw him farther northward, and the death by presumable suicide of Devlin’s forsaken mother Amelia. A series of letters from Francis Stead’s explorer comrade, New York–based Dr. Frederick Cook, lure Devlin to America, amazing revelations from the guilty Dr. Cook (who may know more than he tells about Francis Stead’s disappearance), and a rescue operation to Greenland to retrieve real-life adventurer Robert Peary (with whom Stead and Cook had previously traveled) from another of his several attempts to become the first man to reach the North Pole. Peary’s suspicious mixture of bravado and megalomania seems to have infected Cook, who then takes Devlin with him on a putative “hunting expedition” that appears to climax in Cook’s defeat of (his archrival) Peary. But things are not what they seem, and darker secrets will be revealed before the story reaches its lengthy and moving epilogue. Navigator is generously stuffed with crisp writing, rich characterizations, and haunting descriptions of the harsh beauty of the Arctic (where “ice . . . [is] thrust up like white lava from the center of the earth”). But its heavy reliance on exchanges of letters, meditation, and reconsideration make it an initially slow (if ultimately rewarding) reading experience.
Marginally less wonderful, then, than The Colony of Unrequited Dreams (1999). But all that means is that it’s merely better than about 90 percent of most contemporary fiction. Johnston is a great novelist in the making.Pub Date: Oct. 8, 2002
ISBN: 0-385-50767-4
Page Count: 496
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2002
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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