A 16th-century ghost helps her present-day descendant preserve the past, in a story by American-Israeli Ragen (The Sacrifice of Tamar, 1994, etc.) that’s as much a heartfelt plea for continuity as a family saga. When 74-year-old Catherine da Costa is told that her illness is terminal, she finds herself worrying more about her family’s future than about her own death. Catherine is the only descendant of Hannah Mendes (a real historical figure), who escaped the Spanish Inquisition, did business with kings, and enlarged an already great fortune made from the spice trade. Now the only heirs to whom Catherine can leave the family’s relics—religious objects, Hannah’s Hebrew Bible, a few pages of her memoirs—are her granddaughters Suzanne and Francesca. Catherine’s daughter Janice married out of the faith and shows no interest in the ancestral past, but, unfortunately, the granddaughters aren’t promising material, either: both, in their 20s, are alienated from the family, not religiously observant, have had unsatisfactory relationships, and are still unmarried. Then, while napping in her chair in her Fifth Avenue apartment, Catherine is visited by Hannah’s ghost, who comes up with a plan to ensure the family’s survival. Shamelessly holding out the promise of money, she meets with her granddaughters and asks them to indulge her by going to Europe to track down the remaining pages of Hannah’s own memoirs, begun in 1574. Suzanne, more interested in good causes than family history, and the ever-practical Francesca, not one for the unplanned life, accept reluctantly, but soon find themselves caught up in the search. As the two young women travel, they have their own encounters with Hannah (her story alternates with theirs), and both fall in love with very suitable Sephardic Jews—Gabriel, a doctor who shares Suzanne’s humanitarian concerns, and bookseller Marius, who teaches Francesca to be more carefree. The future assured, Catherine and Hannah can depart in peace. A glossy celebration of culture and family, inevitably a tad schmaltzy but, like Ragen’s previous work, an agreeable enough read.
Pub Date: Sept. 22, 1998
ISBN: 0-684-83393-X
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1998
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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