An uneven erotic tale.
A young woman becomes drawn to an attractive, wealthy, and dominant man in this debut novel.
Beautiful Evelyn “Eve” James, a painter, photographer, and blogger, has just moved to Boston, where her brother, Nick, a successful businessman, lives now that he is about to get married. In a park, Eve catches sight of an intriguing black-haired man, who she soon discovers is her brother’s close friend Malcolm Preston Lynch, 24, one of Boston’s most eligible bachelors. Eve can be hard to sympathize with, considering her eye-rolling disdain for the women who stalk Malcolm; she characterizes them as gold-digging bimbos. She’s unnecessarily snarky, too, criticizing commenters on her public blog for their curiosity. Up close, she’s struck by Malcolm’s gorgeous green eyes and the hurricanelike power he radiates, which sends her into over-the-top physical reactions. Malcolm hires Eve to paint his office walls and arranges outings that display his influence and wealth. Despite her love of independence, she enjoys Malcolm’s bossiness and the feelings he awakens. He appreciates Eve’s beauty and dislike of presents. Both Malcolm and Eve have painful memories that explain their difficulties with intimacy, but as the story continues, the couple’s feelings grow and find thrilling erotic expression. Eve discovers that she enjoys being pampered and exploring kinky scenarios—but will a threat from the past and a misunderstanding shake the pair’s newfound trust? In her novel, Cartwright offers standard romantic tropes: a rich, powerful man whose seeming coldness protects deep psychic wounds; a young woman who gives up her autonomy for a dominant and sexy guy, as when Eve feels she must ask permission to call Malcolm, her brother’s friend, by his first name even when speaking of him to a third party. The strong erotic scenes have heat for those who like in-charge men. But here (as elsewhere), clumsy writing can detract: “Malcolm’s hips moved, rubbing against Eve’s clitorises.” In general, the book needs a sharp editor to correct some errors involving spelling, tense, word choice, and grammar (“She almost stumbled to the ground from him powerful pull”; “I rather have a drink”).
An uneven erotic tale.Pub Date: Dec. 11, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-973521-79-2
Page Count: 338
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: April 18, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
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
© Copyright 2025 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.
