by Antonio Jiménez Barca ; translated by Benjamin Rowdon ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 10, 2015
As a crime novel, this work doesn’t consistently sustain the level of suspense needed for a page-turner, but its reflective...
A down-and-out debt collector abruptly finds himself at the center of a murder investigation.
Spanish lawyer Pablo Esteban’s life is falling apart, as the business he works for is near bankruptcy and his longtime girlfriend has recently left him for another man. Unexpectedly, he runs into his former best friend, Trendy, on the metro, and the two make plans to meet later to reminisce about their teenage years and fill each other in on the decade-plus since they've last seen each other. Later that night, Trendy is stabbed to death, and police investigator Antonio Roche believes that as one of the last people to see him alive, Pablo is the key to solving the murder. Set in 1998, the story begins slowly but becomes increasingly captivating as Pablo is reunited with his childhood friends at Trendy's funeral and later returns to the barrio of his youth. In between time spent assisting Roche with interviews, Pablo pursues meetings with other inhabitants of Madrid who owe his employer long-standing debts, some of whom also have startling connections to Pablo's old life. Jiménez Barca’s novel won the Silverio Cañada Prize in 2006 for best debut crime novel in Spanish, and his prose, translated by Rowdon, deftly conveys a world-weary tone, especially as Pablo reflects on his teenage years and on Nora, the girl he and Trendy both loved. Investigator Roche deftly interrogates Pablo's and Trendy’s former acquaintances, always keeping one eye on how the past is shaping the present, and the case takes on new urgency as Pablo's own life is threatened.
As a crime novel, this work doesn’t consistently sustain the level of suspense needed for a page-turner, but its reflective moments offer eloquence, even in the well-trodden territory of teenage love triangles and coming-of-age tales.Pub Date: Nov. 10, 2015
ISBN: 978-8494349621
Page Count: 326
Publisher: Hispabooks
Review Posted Online: Aug. 30, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2015
Share your opinion of this book
by Hanya Yanagihara ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 10, 2015
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.
Awards & Accolades
Likes
63
Our Verdict
GET IT
Kirkus Reviews'
Best Books Of 2015
Kirkus Prize
winner
National Book Award Finalist
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
Share your opinion of this book
by J.D. Salinger ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 15, 1951
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
Share your opinion of this book
More by J.D. Salinger
BOOK REVIEW
More About This Book
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
APPRECIATIONS
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Hey there, book lover.
We’re glad you found a book that interests you!
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
Trouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Trouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Don’t fret. We’ll find you.