The author has strong ideas but relies too heavily on acronyms and abbreviations and fails to create a multidimensional...
West Coast transplant does battle with Manhattan’s über-moms—Kargman’s first solo after co-authoring two books with Carrie Karasyov (Wolves in Chic Clothing, 2005, etc.).
When Hannah Foster’s husband, Josh, announces he’s been offered a dream job in New York City, Hannah supports him completely—even if it means uprooting her two-year-old daughter, Violet, and leaving behind her close-knit group of San Francisco friends. Hannah dutifully packs up their home and heads cross-country. Despite the sterile temporary apartment, Hannah’s determined to make the move work for her family and give Violet an amazing New York experience. Josh, a native New Yorker, won’t have time to help Hannah transition into this strange world. The best he can do is to connect Hannah with a high-school chum, Bee—now the queen of the “momzillas,” or New York’s elite mothers. These size-two gals inhabit Manhattan’s Upper East Side and make it their mission to look flawless while rearing the next generation of Ivy Leaguers. Perfectly groomed and hyper-connected within New York society, Bee and her cohorts can make or break Hannah’s acceptance into this world of $18,000 private preschools. Hannah’s Nine Inch Nails concert tees and Converse sneakers don’t mesh with cashmere twin sets and pearls, but since Hannah wants the very best for Violet, she’s willing to play their game. Making her way in this alien world where moms outsource the dirty work isn’t a snap, and the outwardly helpful Bee has it in for Hannah. Navigating the playground politics of this privileged crowd nearly breaks Hannah’s spirit. Fortunately, she’s able to shake off her naïveté and claim the city in her own way.
The author has strong ideas but relies too heavily on acronyms and abbreviations and fails to create a multidimensional villain. Still, a decent effort that debunks the myth of the perfect mommy.Pub Date: April 17, 2007
ISBN: 0-7679-2478-9
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Broadway
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2007
BOOK REVIEW
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
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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