Suspense and romance join cultural upheaval in Tehran to help capture a unique moment in world history.
An American teenager learns about love and loss in the midst of 1978’s Iranian Revolution.
Seventeen-year-old Annie Patterson is a member of the quintessential American military family, with her mother; older sister, Debbie; and younger brother, Frankie, never staying too long in one place, ever at the whim of her lieutenant colonel father’s next Air Force assignment. Their newest destination is Tehran, a far cry from the Midwestern life they were only just settling into. Culture shock isn’t Annie’s only worry, however, as rebellion has begun to stir in Iran, and unbeknown to her or even her father, 1978 is the year in which Islamic and leftist revolutionaries will depose the Western-backed shah and install Ruhollah Khomeini as the grand ayatollah. As dissension and anti-American sentiment creep in around the edges of her new life, Annie still finds much about Iran to fall in love with, from its rich history to the daily, haunting beauty of the call to prayer and the stirring poetry of Forough Farrokhzad. But most alluring is the motorcycle-riding “Urban Cowboy” Amir, who catches the eyes of both Annie and Debbie and whose bravery in the face of his own countrymen’s anger may be all that protects the Patterson girls. Heath’s debut novel immerses the reader in Iran on the cusp of its historically unexpected revolution, from the fantastical bazaars to the competing ideologies of its Western modernization and Islamic orthodoxy. Though not a thriller in the traditional sense, there is rising suspense throughout the story, with Annie’s mother’s quiet nervousness, long gas lines, and the initially more inconvenient than frightening curfews slowly giving way to riotous demonstrations, vandalism, terrorism, and home invasions—all directed at Americans and the shah’s regime. Annie functions as a strong narrator, the story told solely from her perspective, allowing teenage romance to retain the same dramatic importance as cultural insurrection, while remaining surprisingly nonjudgmental about the uprising’s circumstances (no black-and-white villains here). The only downside is that Annie’s reserved nature often leaves her isolated inside the Pattersons’ plush Iranian home, while the adventures of Debbie, who, while more self-involved, is much quicker to engage with Iranian culture, are only relayed secondhand.
Suspense and romance join cultural upheaval in Tehran to help capture a unique moment in world history.Pub Date: Feb. 25, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-9965517-1-7
Page Count: 348
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Aug. 25, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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