A rambling but touching account of one man’s search for acceptance.
A middle-aged cancer survivor held hostage by his secrets looks for friendship and redemption during a transformational summer on the Jersey shore.
The calendar may say 1987, but the past is never far away for Jimmy Hanlon in this three-book series from debut novelist Bennett. The 47-year-old protagonist is a lifelong resident of Belmar, New Jersey—a small town with a long memory. And after nearly five decades, Jimmy’s reputation is far from sterling. Although well-liked, the closeted grandfather of two remains best known among his fellow boardwalk denizens for his failed marriage and seemingly endless stash of grade A marijuana. Jimmy’s recent laryngectomy renders him unable to speak without the assistance of a hand-held electrolarynx, further perpetuating his outsider status. Yet when rumors about his sexuality begin to circulate, Jimmy has no choice but to respond. After years of isolation and loneliness, Jimmy finds opening up about his orientation freeing. No longer living in fear, he begins to seek out the things he wants in life and becomes an advocate for other lost souls, noting: “Something about secrets Mother taught me—they fester.” In the midst of the AIDS crisis, Jimmy lets go of decades’ worth of anger, shame, and sadness, forever reshaping his role in his family and community. Bennett succeeds in crafting a wholly original protagonist over the course of his series. Jimmy’s compelling back story should keep readers hooked, and Bennett drops just enough bread crumbs throughout the series to maintain interest. But structural issues could prevent some readers from venturing far into the tale. The timeline in the series’ opening chapter is muddled, jumping between descriptions of Jimmy’s childhood, his adult years, and his father’s adolescence. And the narration, while rich with details, meanders through too many plot points and characters. Overly verbose descriptions of mundane tasks, such as searching for a parking spot, grind the action to a halt on several occasions. But readers who stick with the story will be rewarded with a richly drawn main character. Jimmy’s path to redemption is original and heart-rending.
A rambling but touching account of one man’s search for acceptance.Pub Date: Feb. 2, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-692-59162-8
Page Count: 610
Publisher: Unsolicited Press
Review Posted Online: March 4, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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