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
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
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
