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CRY OF THE LEOPARD

An occasionally imaginative and more frequently turgid first novel by a poet-playwright whose verbal skills can't disguise the fact that his half-human protagonist is an all-too-familiar melodramatic type. The self-styled Leopard Man narrates in discontinuous fragments his experiences as a child in a Catholic orphanage (where he's told ``Our Lord works in mysterious ways, but none more mysterious than you''), as the protÇgÇ of a Pan-African black academic, and in a traveling carnival (``The Eight Human Wonders of the World'') that displays weird and frightening freaks of nature, such as himself. The novel is initially off-putting because its disjointed chronology obscures his origins and growth, but things gradually intensify as we learn he was the illegitimate son of a prostitute and born in a brothel, and realize that his image of himself as a magnificent jungle creature may be no more than a compensatory psychosis. But Steinberg unwisely tries to have it both ways, emphasizing both the Leopard Man's involuted dreaminess and the terrified reactions of others to his (presumably literal) fur and fangs. Is he deranged, or is he indeed a mutant life-form? The very ambiguity might be effective were it not for Steinberg's overreliance on patently symbolic plot elements (such as the furtive releasing of animals from a zoo) and orotund rhetorical palaver (the L.M. and his acquaintances say far too many things like ``What is the truth of my life?'' and ``What is the lion's roar to a river's stone?''). The best moments here occur when the protagonist briefly, inconclusively connects with ``other'' humans (his late-night encounter with a rape victim who believes wild animals must be taught to coexist peacefully has a resonance that is unfortunately left undeveloped). One hopes that Steinberg will next apply his talents to more promising material. In this case, the nature of the beast just isn't that interesting.

Pub Date: Aug. 1, 1997

ISBN: 0-312-15507-7

Page Count: 224

Publisher: St. Martin's

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 1997

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A LITTLE LIFE

The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.

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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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TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD

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

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