From a writer whose career has now spanned almost 60 years comes a volume of breathtakingly perfected and lovely stories that have most of the past century for their grazing land. Maxwell's first fiction since the novel So Long, See You Tomorrow (American Book Award, 1980). Nothing that Maxwell touches upon in these far-back reminiscences is ever bruised or forced as the author, again and again, patiently and delicately draws forth moments of recognition and quiet epiphany from the distant past. ``Billie Dyer'' is the historian-author's tale of a black man from a poor family in turn- of-the-century Lincoln, Illinois, who went on to become an influential medical doctor. Himself born in Lincoln in 1908, Maxwell can devote four pages to the death of a beloved fifth-grade teacher (``Love'') without the faintest whisper of sentimentality, and in another five pages find a life's-worth of self-recognition in a simple childhood moment of moral failure (``With Reference to an Incident at a Bridge''). Longer pieces roam into their material and bring alive the daily life of a lost century, as in a story of a ne'er-do-well uncle (``The Man in the Moon''); through subtle biographies of townspeople told on the occasion of a death (``My Father's Friends''); in a study of race, class, and family history (``The Front and the Back Parts of the House''); or in the passionately quiet tale of a brother losing a leg in a childhood accident (``The Holy Terror''). ``As the details unfolded before my mind,'' writes Maxwell at one point, ``I went on putting them down, trusting that there was a story and that I would eventually find it.'' He finds it again and again, with delicacy, intelligence, and piercing beauty, in fiction that draws stories forth from the reality of life instead of imposing them on it. Treasurable small masterworks of American literature.
Pub Date: Feb. 12, 1992
ISBN: 0-679-40832-0
Page Count: 112
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 1991
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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