A butler’s fictionalized account of the unhappiness in a Hamptons household and the true heart of the mansion—the staff.
In Williams’ novel, a butler recounts the jealousy, drama and poisoning in the home of his Hamptons employer.
In his first novel, based on true events, Williams describes his turn as house manager for wealthy Mr. Farber and his much-younger second wife, Mrs. Elena Farber. Williams trained at a well-respected butler school, but nothing would prepare him for the mystery, intrigue, jealousy and attempted murder that occur in the Hamptons mansion of his employers. Williams must navigate the tension-filled relationship between the Farbers as well as gain the trust of the staff. Not long after Williams begins working for the family and is finally managing the lavish social calendar and quirks of his employers, the marriage of Mr. and Mrs. Farber starts to deteriorate, and Williams is caught in the middle. Things come to a head when someone gives the couple poisoned cognac. The investigation yields no leads despite the many suspects. Williams reveals the poisoning early in the narrative, describing the suspects and then retracing the events leading to the attempted murder. The novel builds tension throughout, but the ending is as decidedly anticlimactic as in real life; however, Williams’ insight into the lives of the wealthy and those who serve them intrigues. He imparts household knowledge (“silverware” is reserved for real silver utensils while “flatware” refers to stainless steel) and illustrates the lack of privacy for the rich: “The thing is, as house staff we see, hear, and feel all the emotions going on in the house each and every day, which affects all of us here and the work we need to get done.”
A butler’s fictionalized account of the unhappiness in a Hamptons household and the true heart of the mansion—the staff.Pub Date: Dec. 11, 2013
ISBN: 978-1492805557
Page Count: 290
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Jan. 14, 2014
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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