A well-imagined celebration of Pacioli’s life and philosophy.
A fictional recounting of the life of a Renaissance mathematician and cleric.
Parker’s debut novel, part of the Mentoris Project of historical novels and biographies celebrating notable Italians, tells the story of Luca Pacioli, who combined mathematics and religion in 15th- and 16th-century Italy. After growing up in the town of Sansepolcro, Pacioli is apprenticed to a merchant who doesn’t appreciate his enthusiasm for Arabic numerals. He finds a more supportive mentor in artist Piero della Francesca, and this association leads Pacioli to new connections and collaborations as he develops his skills and Italy goes through religious and political turmoil. He’s ordained as a friar, publishes several books on mathematics and related topics, and works with various artists, including Leonardo da Vinci (“We made an odd couple, surely, one atheist and one devout friar”). Throughout his career, he draws connections between math and religion, particularly in his investigation of the divine proportion of the book’s title—a ratio that appears throughout the natural world. This novel hews closely to its subject’s documented history, and Parker does an excellent job of imagining the rest, including cameos by historical figures, such as Martin Luther. Some stylistic choices add to the book’s feeling of uniqueness; for instance, each chapter ends with a number in the famous Fibonacci mathematical sequence. The narrative is also presented as a memoir that Pacioli is dictating to a young scribe, who leaves occasional footnotes throughout the text. Parker ably explains Pacioli’s theological approach to math and balances the book’s spiritual and historical elements. However, Luca’s frequent asides to the reader (“I want to make sure you understand this reference since it’s important you grasp my sense of humor and the type of playful banter Guiliano and I had with one another”) can break the novel’s flow at times. Although some readers may be unsatisfied with the novel’s deliberately open-ended resolution, many are likely to appreciate the intriguing history and well-rounded characters.
A well-imagined celebration of Pacioli’s life and philosophy.Pub Date: Sept. 26, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-947431-27-0
Page Count: 238
Publisher: Barbera Foundation, Inc.
Review Posted Online: Sept. 18, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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