A rousing, good sequel to River God, Smith's 1994 bestseller, which takes the immensely entertaining form of a high-tech treasure hunt. Instead of a treasure map, brainy and beautiful Royan Al Simma (an English-educated Coptic Christian who ranks among the world's top Egyptologists) has a 4,000-year-old scroll. The witty testament of Taita (the polymath eunuch who narrated River God), it offers maddeningly enigmatic details on where he interred Mamose in pharaonic splendor during an extended exile. Before Royan can fully decipher Taita's message, however, the papyrus is stolen and her husband, an aging scholar, is murdered by unknown assailants. She flees Cairo for her British mother's home in Yorkshire, where she eventually joins forces with Nicholas Quenton-Harper, a daredevil peer with a taste for ancient artifacts and a flair for derring-do. In search of the vast riches buried with Mamose, Nicky organizes two archetypally hazardous expeditions into deepest Ethiopia (one legit, the other not). Despite the resourceful opposition of a villainous German industrialist who wants the long-dead sovereign's funerary wealth for his own collection, the plucky pair (with a little help from a community of Coptic monks and a righteous rebel chieftain) unearth the Pharaoh's tomb beneath a treacherous gorge at the headwaters of the Nile. To deter grave robbers, Taita booby- trapped the subterranean sepulcher—which can be reached only by damning a stretch of the wild Dandera river, so Nicky and Royan must overcome a host of perils before they return to civilization with booty worth millions. At the close, all parties to the excellent enterprise have gotten approximately what's coming to them, and Royan has a grant from the Smithsonian to reopen Mamose's tomb, which has again been sealed behind a riverine barrier. A master storyteller at the top of his considerable form. (First printing of 250,000; $250,000 ad/promo)
Pub Date: April 1, 1995
ISBN: 0-312-11999-2
Page Count: 496
Publisher: Dunne/St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 1995
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
A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.
Pub Date: July 11, 1960
ISBN: 0060935464
Page Count: 323
Publisher: Lippincott
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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