Strange and carnal; a riddle of language, the body, and the artistic impulse.
A murky, dreamlike collage of corporeal escape and sexual fantasy.
Moskovich’s debut novel opens with a mysterious, unexplained room full of “Natashas”—women who’ve abandoned their own names and whose existences are woven through this discontinuous story of two artists. Moskovich writes of Béatrice, a shapely jazz singer who lives with her sister and parents, and César, a Mexican-born actor living in Paris. Béatrice’s body is sexualized from an early age; her family and friends—even her father—tease her, calling her "Miss Monroe” or "Miss Marilyn." This sexualization is echoed by the insertion of chapters about the Natashas, who also exist as both caricatures and sex objects. While César is disappearing dangerously deep into the characters he plays, using the violent back stories he creates for his parts to drive his own courage, Béatrice is visited by a woman named Polina, who tells her, “There are people who leave their bodies and their bodies go on living without them....These people are named Natasha.” Readers looking for a traditional story without gaps will be disappointed, but the mystery surrounding a woman from César’s past and the purpose of the Natashas propels this tale forward. Are the Natashas muses? Prostitutes? An otherworldly entity? Is Béatrice going to become one of them? And how are they connected to her vocal gift? Moskovich’s perspective on language is one of the most interesting parts of this novel. “In Russian, you don’t have to go missing,” she writes. “It’s a single verb. The verb sits next to your name and you’re gone.” At times, the story is hard to follow, but the collective effect of Moskovich’s images is strangely captivating. The novel builds to a somewhat unexpected ending that is, if not satisfying, at least provocative.
Strange and carnal; a riddle of language, the body, and the artistic impulse.Pub Date: March 13, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-945814-48-8
Page Count: 232
Publisher: Dzanc
Review Posted Online: Dec. 23, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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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