Pride & Prejudice for the CNN age.
Talented chef with a lousy romantic history finds herself drawn to an Iraq war veteran with a troubled past.
For such a sensual and attractive woman, Vanessa Chavez has a real knack for attracting Mr. Wrong, specifically guys who conveniently forget to tell her they’re married before breaking her heart. So after a doomed entanglement with a pastry chef and his suicidal wife, this sous chef at one of Albuquerque’s hottest restaurants swears off men. Enter Paul, a strapping hunk newly sprung from the Air Force who’s staying with his mother, who conveniently lives next door to Vanessa’s parents. Brash and flirtatious, Paul sets about winning Vanessa, even though she initially rebuffs his overtures. He’s not her type, but she comes to realize that he’s far from the right-wing meathead she assumed him to be. In fact, he’s sophisticated, soulful and nearly as complex as he is hot. On the down side, Paul is psychologically burdened with what he saw—and did—as a pilot in the Middle East. The full extent of his wartime experience emerges slowly as the two grow closer. With Paul’s encouragement, Vanessa takes stock of her life and begins to stand up for herself. She starts with older sister Larissa, who almost seems to prefer her needy and unhappy, then moves on to her boss Hawk, a pompous celebrity chef who has long been taking credit for her work. Just as she feels herself on the verge of happily-ever-after, along comes a Paul-related bombshell that might indeed be a deal breaker for someone with Vanessa’s many trust issues. In spite of some overdescriptive passages and clunky narration, Valdes-Rodriguez’s latest benefits from deeper character development than some of her earlier works (Dirty Girls on Top, 2008, etc.). Paul and Vanessa’s messy lives make them a couple to root for.
Pride & Prejudice for the CNN age.Pub Date: July 1, 2009
ISBN: 978-0-312-53704-3
Page Count: 384
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2009
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
© Copyright 2023 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
bookshelf
