A richly satisfying slice of Americana.
An earnest teen learns valuable life lessons in Comer’s vividly rendered debut set in the frontier country of 19th-century Montana.
Life has dealt 14-year-old Deuteronomy Jesudas Seebea a raw hand. He’s an orphan trying to make his way in the world without guidance. Worse, Deuter knows too much about shady goings-on in Clevis Hook, Montana, and is forced to leave town abruptly. He eventually makes his way to a remote outpost, a small settlement called Railstop, where the slow westward crawl of a railroad line has come to an abrupt halt. The ragtag Band of Brigands has set up shop right in the path of the only logical route for the railroad’s expansion—and they won’t go down without a fight. Railstop’s many intriguing characters include Angelique de la Bataille, proprietress of the Glory Hole Saloon; Lyman Connors, the village smithy; and the O’Doody sisters, Parsimonie and Chastity, whose rock-solid biscuits can take out unsuspecting passersby. Much of the action is centered on the residents’ efforts to win a just settlement for the railroad expansion. Trying to make his voice heard in this cacophony is young Deuter; exploited for his naiveté, he still uses worldly skills to position himself on the right side of history. The rugged, Wild West nature of Montana is one of the novel’s many highlights, as much a living, breathing character as the humans. Evocative descriptions—“Boy’s mind is like cowboy coffee, made without a filter”—and crisp, salty dialogue liven up the proceedings, often with a dash of humor. The narrative still sags toward the middle, as talks between the railroad and town lose steam and the novelty of the setting and characters begins to wear a little thin. Despite the dip, what emerges in the end is an entertaining peek at an important moment in American history, when the glamour of gold was still glittering bright and the West was being won one small outpost at a time.
A richly satisfying slice of Americana.Pub Date: April 25, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-941295-52-6
Page Count: 264
Publisher: Barking Rain Press
Review Posted Online: July 30, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 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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