A breezy, unremarkable comic romp with a comforting message of self-acceptance, offering a few poignant moments that...
From Halpern (The Ten Best Days of My Life, 2008, etc.), the story of a wealthy Philadelphia widow nostalgic for her youth who finds her wish granted after her 75th birthday.
Elegant, independent and devoted to her family, Ellie Jerome has much to be thankful for in her life. Still, she cannot shake the nagging feeling that she missed out on something by marrying so young. Her husband Howard was a prominent lawyer who kept his emotions—and his infidelities—under wraps. Also, by living a few blocks away from her adored 25-year-old granddaughter, Lucy, Ellie is curious and a bit envious of the seemingly boundless opportunities modern young women enjoy. So when she wakes up the day after her birthday to find herself in her supple 29-year-old body, she takes it as a sign to do everything that she has long denied herself. She then sets off for a day of adventure with Lucy, who takes very little convincing that the strange lady in her grandmother’s apartment is indeed her grandmother. Knowing that her daughter Barbara and best friend Frida would be harder sells (and killjoys), she ignores their increasingly alarmed phone messages and passes herself off as Lucy’s cousin. She gets a cool haircut, buys a sexy dress and helps Lucy land a big sale for her fashion designs. She also meets a cute guy, Zachary, who asks her out for the evening. She agrees, thrilled, not really sure what the boys these days expect on a first date. Meanwhile, timid Frida and bossy Barbara experience a series of misfortunes while combing the streets in search of Ellie. That gives the two a chance to bond as well, and come to terms with their own regrets. Of course, Ellie cannot hide out for long, and all good things must end, even if they inconveniently end in a young man’s bed.
A breezy, unremarkable comic romp with a comforting message of self-acceptance, offering a few poignant moments that underscore how far women have come in the past 50 years.Pub Date: June 15, 2010
ISBN: 978-1-4391-7112-7
Page Count: 288
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: June 3, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2010
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.
Life lessons.
Angie Malone, the youngest of a big, warm Italian-American family, returns to her Pacific Northwest hometown to wrestle with various midlife disappointments: her divorce, Papa’s death, a downturn in business at the family restaurant, and, above all, her childlessness. After several miscarriages, she, a successful ad exec, and husband Conlan, a reporter, befriended a pregnant young girl and planned to adopt her baby—and then the birth mother changed her mind. Angie and Conlan drifted apart and soon found they just didn’t love each other anymore. Metaphorically speaking, “her need for a child had been a high tide, an overwhelming force that drowned them. A year ago, she could have kicked to the surface but not now.” Sadder but wiser, Angie goes to work in the struggling family restaurant, bickering with Mama over updating the menu and replacing the ancient waitress. Soon, Angie befriends another young girl, Lauren Ribido, who’s eager to learn and desperately needs a job. Lauren’s family lives on the wrong side of the tracks, and her mother is a promiscuous alcoholic, but Angie knows nothing of this sad story and welcomes Lauren into the DeSaria family circle. The girl listens in, wide-eyed, as the sisters argue and make wisecracks and—gee-whiz—are actually nice to each other. Nothing at all like her relationship with her sluttish mother, who throws Lauren out when boyfriend David, en route to Stanford, gets her pregnant. Will Lauren, who’s just been accepted to USC, let Angie adopt her baby? Well, a bit of a twist at the end keeps things from becoming too predictable.
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.Pub Date: July 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-345-46750-7
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2004
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
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