This book’s story swings and misses, but its clever drawings win the day.
In this work of fiction aimed at adults, Hutchison explores the secret lives that fat cells lead inside their human hosts.
This book’s introduction seems to promise a well-thought-out antidote to body negativity: “Healthy and fit humans come in all sizes. No one deserves to be bullied because they carry extra weight upon their frame.” It then takes anthropomorphism to an extreme, painting fat cells as jolly, fun-loving constituents of the human body. The story itself, however, quickly gets tangled up in its own creativity. The first half of the book is dedicated to a body-part-by-body-part accounting of what fat cells do in each part, and what they think of it. It includes descriptions of the cells’ activities in the eyes (“When we see humans read, it is a sight for sore eyes, especially if those humans are reading cookbooks!”), ears, breasts, and genitals, among others. Unfortunately, the book’s high-energy verbal patter defuses the impact of its cleverness; its copious, frequent use of alliteration (“Is craziness contagious? Is insanity inevitable? Is lunacy looming?”) obscures any larger message that the author may have been trying to convey. Her agile imagination is front and center, on clear display. However, the nonstop, rapid-fire levity means that readers never have a chance to catch their breath and decide what they think or feel about the images presented. Hutchison is at her best when she keeps the text to simpler, unadorned statements (“[F]at cells just want a little respect and a lot of laughter from humans”), and she positively shines in the second portion of the book, which offers brief essays on the personalities of individual fat cells. Each of these is written as a case study from the files of the psychotherapist Dr. R. U. Nuttee—himself a fat cell—and coupled with a simple but evocative illustration of the cell in question. Overall, the author isn’t short on talent or creativity, but they aren’t properly focused here. Perhaps her style and talents would be more suited to writing and illustrating children’s books, or to creating the short, sharp vignettes of single-panel comics.
This book’s story swings and misses, but its clever drawings win the day.Pub Date: Jan. 11, 2015
ISBN: 978-0692341841
Page Count: 234
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: April 25, 2015
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
A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.
Pub Date: July 11, 1960
ISBN: 0060935464
Page Count: 323
Publisher: Lippincott
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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