An intriguing, sometimes-painful reminder of 1950s culture that offers enough bright spots to make this novel an enjoyable...
A summer job as a recreational therapist in a New York City psychiatric hospital unlocks the door to self-discovery for this tale’s young heroine.
King (A Woman Walking: 2nd Edition, 2016, etc.) reaches back to her own youthful work experience to create the backdrop for her latest novel—a depressing state institution in which fragile, and sometimes violent, patients are housed rather than treated. It is 1956, and 19-year-old Rennie Weinstein needs a summer job that will pay enough to get her through her senior year of college. Concordia Hospital, home to 6,000 patients in Queens, seems to offer a better opportunity than the standard camp/swimming instructor/coffee shop summer jobs: $60 a week to show up, take the women out to play, don’t lose anyone, and go home. Experience in working with mentally ill patients not required. And no training offered. Despite the requisite Loyalty Oath that she must sign to be a state employee (although the Senate hearings ended in 1954, the debris of McCarthyism still lingers), something Rennie considers repugnant, she decides to accept the position. Nervous, confused, and burdened by her own substantial load of emotional baggage, Rennie finds herself breaking the cardinal rules of employment at Concordia, as emphasized by the director, Jack Carson: “Don’t get personal. Don’t get friendly. Don’t offer to help.” As the summer progresses, she forges friendships with a remarkable assortment of secondary characters— Bruce, the son of the head psychiatrist at Concordia; Yanni, an Israeli cafe owner; and three protective construction workers who come to her rescue more than once. More important, she begins to earn a modicum of trust among the patients. Through these vivid relationships, Rennie begins to see the world beyond her own self-involvement. King makes effective use of the first-person narrative. Because the patients are depicted through Rennie’s eyes, and she is unencumbered by the details of diagnosis and prognosis, they are portrayed with a visceral poignancy and compassion (“The women ran to the field like kids let out of school for summer vacation. They ran and shouted and argued and cheered, releasing pent up energy, laughing when someone hit a home run”). The negative aspect of being inside Rennie’s head is that readers have to endure a bit too many of her overwrought anxiety attacks.
An intriguing, sometimes-painful reminder of 1950s culture that offers enough bright spots to make this novel an enjoyable read.Pub Date: May 20, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-63210-015-3
Page Count: 250
Publisher: Plain View Press
Review Posted Online: April 19, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 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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