Mann’s party boys make a sexy first impression but prove surprisingly deep upon further inspection. The same goes for Where...
Against a background of sweaty bodies, fierce divas, and the drug-induced lust of gay circuit parties, former lovers struggle to reconnect.
Picking up where The Men From the Boys (1997) left off, Mann brings thirtysomethings Jeff O’Brien and Lloyd Griffith back together years after their relationship fell apart and their best friend and mentor Javitz died of AIDS. Jeff and Lloyd have traveled divergent paths in the meantime. Jeff, living in Boston, has become obsessed with working out, casual sex, drug use, and circuit parties where he can meet thousands of beautiful, shirtless gym bunnies on the dance floor. Lloyd, living in Provincetown, has found his spiritual side, remained celibate, and eschewed the narcissistic adventures his ex-lover has embraced. Despite these differences, when the two come together, old flames are rekindled and the men start to rebuild what they’ve lost. Complicating matters, though, is a web of secondary characters who keep interfering. Jeff has a circle of friends—including nebbish-turned-stud Henry, who looks up to Jeff the way Jeff once looked up to Javitz—who don’t want to see him settle down in domestic bliss. And Lloyd has an unbalanced business partner who’s jealous of Jeff’s intimate bond. Mann weaves this emotional tale deftly, shifting narrators from Jeff to Lloyd to Henry and giving insight into each one’s motivations. Two mysterious characters—Lloyd’s partner Eva and Jeff’s latest infatuation, Anthony—add interest by having secrets that are only gradually revealed. A breezily conversational tone makes for an easy read even as Mann grapples with complex questions facing many gays today: What does family mean? Why is trust so simple among strangers and so difficult between lovers? How can the patterns be broken that paralyze emotional growth?
Mann’s party boys make a sexy first impression but prove surprisingly deep upon further inspection. The same goes for Where the Boys Are.Pub Date: May 6, 2003
ISBN: 0-7582-0326-8
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Kensington
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2003
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
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
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