A futuristic tale with some capable writing but only surface sophistication.
In this YA sci-fi novel, everyone must choose a personal destiny after examining three options—but a young woman pursues free will.
A few generations from now, the world is happier and less destructive. An implanted microchip, explains narrator Cassia Bellerose, “tracks our response to every decision we’ve ever made, and stores that data until we go to the Trivium at eighteen years old.” At the Trivium, everyone is presented three possible futures that are the consequences of decisions made so far and must select one. Because no one remembers the Trivium experience, it’s something of a mystery, and Cassia—almost 18 and in her last week of high school—wonders whether it’s possible to change one’s fate. But she’s an organized planner and likes predictability; she wants to become a doctor and marry her boyfriend, Gunner. Lately, though, Cassia’s been having vivid dreams of a brown-haired boy; in one, they share a hammock, reading books. When she runs into the boy of her dreams, Ethan Rivers, they share an instant connection—and it turns out he’s been having the same dreams. Something odd happens at their Triviums, and though their paths diverge, Cassia and Ethan could solve the puzzle of their separation (the girl’s mother has a secret that could help) and find a way to change fate. In her novel, Nguyen (From Start to Fiction, 2018) offers an intelligent bookworm heroine whose love of Jane Austen will likely strike a chord in readers. The science part of the fiction, involving string theory and a rift in space-time, gets a somewhat reasonable explanation, though how the Trivium provides not just possible but guaranteed futures is murky. The puzzle aspect lends some interest, important because beneath the window dressing, the story rests on that stale plot device, a love triangle. There’s little suspense about Cassia’s choice: Gunner is “my friend. Ethan lights a fire inside me I never want to quench.” The work seems rather adolescent in its ideas about the world, illustrated by Cassia’s amazing, near-instant success as a writer.
A futuristic tale with some capable writing but only surface sophistication.Pub Date: March 23, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-73205-592-6
Page Count: 334
Publisher: Two Sparrows Publishing
Review Posted Online: Aug. 6, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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 2024 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
