Frucht (Snap, Fruit of the Month—both 1988) gives the ``Gift of the Magi'' a contemporary spin as she unevenly limns a very 1990's marriage. The setting is a Middle American town small enough for characters to walk to work but big enough to provide well-paying jobs for the protagonists, husband Douglas and wife Cara—which means that the couple, who love each other very much, as well as their son Georgie and dog Kato, can then spend most of their time with their feelings and each other. Life is all sweetness and light as Douglas does his radio broadcasts and Cara intermittently works at her part-time counseling job; and since they take themselves very seriously, ``they send money to all the right places, never gripe about taxes, and turn off the lights when they leave a room.'' A second pregnancy, graphically described, produces young Max, and Cara feels the family is complete—but 18 months later, Cara is pregnant again. This time, the pregnancy raises all the big questions and emotions that, with supportive husband Douglas, Cara fully addresses. While the debate is conducted with a moving sensitivity, Cara does go on and on—which undercuts the impact of her ultimate choice. After a decision is made, though, a foolish lie precipitates a temporary rupture in the marriage—just as Douglas and Cara (each unbeknownst to the other) have undergone sterilization (``the fear and apprehension and worry'' would be forever lifted). But this is happy-ending country: by the close, the couple become reconciled and reveal just what it is they've done for each other. A moving and thoughtful handling of difficult issues by characters unfortunately more conventional than substantial. And the ending is just too cute, too slick—more a neat solution than a cosmic sacrifice.
Pub Date: April 2, 1993
ISBN: 0-8021-1539-X
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Grove
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 1993
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.
A violent surfacing of adolescence (which has little in common with Tarkington's earlier, broadly comic, Seventeen) has a compulsive impact.
"Nobody big except me" is the dream world of Holden Caulfield and his first person story is down to the basic, drab English of the pre-collegiate. For Holden is now being bounced from fancy prep, and, after a vicious evening with hall- and roommates, heads for New York to try to keep his latest failure from his parents. He tries to have a wild evening (all he does is pay the check), is terrorized by the hotel elevator man and his on-call whore, has a date with a girl he likes—and hates, sees his 10 year old sister, Phoebe. He also visits a sympathetic English teacher after trying on a drunken session, and when he keeps his date with Phoebe, who turns up with her suitcase to join him on his flight, he heads home to a hospital siege. This is tender and true, and impossible, in its picture of the old hells of young boys, the lonesomeness and tentative attempts to be mature and secure, the awful block between youth and being grown-up, the fright and sickness that humans and their behavior cause the challenging, the dramatization of the big bang. It is a sorry little worm's view of the off-beat of adult pressure, of contemporary strictures and conformity, of sentiment….
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.Pub Date: June 15, 1951
ISBN: 0316769177
Page Count: -
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1951
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
APPRECIATIONS
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
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