Four virtuoso performances, playfully juggling exuberant prose with sly postmodern speculations on the nature of desire, fiction, and the soul. A fascination with absorption, with the process of dissolving into some much-studied subject, seems to lie at the core of these novellas. In the title piece, a hapless biographer struggles to render something of the life of a woman who had clairvoyant powers, but finds language elusive, and truth uncertain. The deeper he digs, the less he knows. In “Bed and Breakfast,” a shady traveling accountant is at first intrigued, then obsessed, by the overwhelming numbers of “objects, ornaments and endearments” the stately owner of a bed and breakfast has accumulated. Used to living in a featureless world, he finds the mass of kitsch (from bottles to wall plaques) oddly reassuring, and in them, he discovers “History. Not a life lost, not a thought gone, not a feeling faded, but retained by these things,”a tenuous connection with simple, restorative life. Not surprisingly, he cannot imagine ever again leaving his lodgings. “Emma Enters a Sentence of Elizabeth Bishop’s,” the grimmest tale, features a desiccated would-be poet who tries, quite literally, to plunge into the lines, to virtually become the words, of her favorite poet, with rather grisly results. “The Master of Secret Revenges,” another faux biography, offers the life story of Luther Penner,. who creates a religion based on the principle of leveling an ingenious revenge on all those thought to have harmed one. Because these tales are by Gass (The Tunnel, 1995, etc.), they are of course much more than the sum of their odd, alarming characters and parts, and they—re full of deeply inventive wordplay, droll references to philosophy, as well as ingenious metaphors about the nature and purpose of artistic creation. Displaying crackling verbal energy, a fond fascination with the detritus of our culture (our “priceless and useless and adorable” artifacts), and a shrewd grasp of our conflicting (and conflicted) beliefs, these startling novellas remind us that Gass is the most purely original (and idiosyncratic) of our major writers.
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1998
ISBN: 0-375-40168-7
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Knopf
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
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Dated sermonizing on career versus motherhood, and conflict driven by characters’ willed helplessness, sap this tale of...
Lifelong, conflicted friendship of two women is the premise of Hannah’s maudlin latest (Magic Hour, 2006, etc.), again set in Washington State.
Tallulah “Tully” Hart, father unknown, is the daughter of a hippie, Cloud, who makes only intermittent appearances in her life. Tully takes refuge with the family of her “best friend forever,” Kate Mularkey, who compares herself unfavorably with Tully, in regards to looks and charisma. In college, “TullyandKate” pledge the same sorority and major in communications. Tully has a life goal for them both: They will become network TV anchorwomen. Tully lands an internship at KCPO-TV in Seattle and finagles a producing job for Kate. Kate no longer wishes to follow Tully into broadcasting and is more drawn to fiction writing, but she hesitates to tell her overbearing friend. Meanwhile a love triangle blooms at KCPO: Hard-bitten, irresistibly handsome, former war correspondent Johnny is clearly smitten with Tully. Expecting rejection, Kate keeps her infatuation with Johnny secret. When Tully lands a reporting job with a Today-like show, her career shifts into hyperdrive. Johnny and Kate had started an affair once Tully moved to Manhattan, and when Kate gets pregnant with daughter Marah, they marry. Kate is content as a stay-at-home mom, but frets about being Johnny’s second choice and about her unrealized writing ambitions. Tully becomes Seattle’s answer to Oprah. She hires Johnny, which spells riches for him and Kate. But Kate’s buttons are fully depressed by pitched battles over slutwear and curfews with teenaged Marah, who idolizes her godmother Tully. In an improbable twist, Tully invites Kate and Marah to resolve their differences on her show, only to blindside Kate by accusing her, on live TV, of overprotecting Marah. The BFFs are sundered. Tully’s latest attempt to salvage Cloud fails: The incorrigible, now geriatric hippie absconds once more. Just as Kate develops a spine, she’s given some devastating news. Will the friends reconcile before it’s too late?
Dated sermonizing on career versus motherhood, and conflict driven by characters’ willed helplessness, sap this tale of poignancy.Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2008
ISBN: 978-0-312-36408-3
Page Count: 496
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2007
BOOK TO SCREEN
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