Two 20-something bloggers consider American women’s love/hate relationship with food in this amusing second novel from Rockland.
The story opens on the set of Oprah as Alexis (author of the Skinny Chick blog) and Shoshana (of Fat and Fabulous fame) are about to weigh in on weight. Shoshana’s blog advocates that a healthy self-esteem and healthy diet are all women need to feel good about themselves, no matter the dress size. She’s over 200 pounds, and her millions of followers, called Fatties, like her just the way she is. Alexis, barely 100 pounds, writes about America’s alarming obesity epidemic and dictates everyone should count their calories and burn their buns. After the explosive TV appearance, the two part ways and don’t meet again until a year later at the end of the novel. In the meantime, both Shoshana and Alexis come to realize that their fanaticism stems from…issues. Alexis, proud of her tart bitchiness, lives with her best friend Billy. While Billy is flamboyant and fun, Alexis lives a life controlled by weight—she weighs her food, herself, the value of others. She exercises at the crack of dawn to keep her whippet-like figure, but all that flies out the window when she meets Noah, a gorgeous, funny chef. Noah reminds her of her dead brother, and Alexis allows herself to be happy again. Less fragile than Alexis, Shoshana’s life changes when she inherits an old farmhouse and orchard. She befriends her eccentric Irish neighbor and begins restoring the property, with an eye to a new business venture. With all that manual labor, Shoshana begins to drop the pounds while pregnant Alexis begins to put them on, and the two meet in the middle. Occasionally the language lacks polish (“Shoshana had beautiful, stunning hair”) but Rockland’s study of the two women is fresh and enjoyable. Skinny chicks, chubby gals and all in between will connect to this perennially favorite female subject: how much a body should weigh.
Pub Date: Jan. 17, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-312-57601-1
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Dunne/St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Dec. 12, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2012
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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