A tale of misplaced trust, opportunities lost, and indefatigable hope that will satisfy war vets and pacifists alike.
A thriller about a college student who flees to Canada after his favorite professor frames him for murder.
Sharry depicts the same post–Vietnam War disillusionment that was central to his first book, For Renata (2014). In the wake of the disastrous riots at Kent State University, college student and reservist Bobby Coyle is called by his commanders to help quell protests at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. When one of Bobby’s superiors becomes aggressive toward a young co-ed, Bobby steps in to defend her, knocking out his commanding officer. Worried he may have killed the man, Bobby runs from the scene looking for help, which he finds in Adam Payne. Little does Bobby know that Payne is a psychopath, a terrifically evil man engaged in a string of his own crimes and indiscretions. Payne seizes upon Bobby’s misfortune, manipulating the scenario so Bobby takes the fall for Payne’s unrelated wrongdoings. He convinces Bobby to escape to Canada, where Payne intends to complete the frame-up, then have him killed. As Bobby tries to create a new life for himself, he wises up to Payne’s plan, staying in hiding to evade American authorities as well as Payne. As Sharry shifts between scenes of the deserter and the deserted, he keeps the reader guessing about whether Bobby will ever find peace and whether Payne will get his just deserts. There is constant fear throughout the tale that Payne will catch up with Bobby, putting an end to the gripping cat-and-mouse game he has created. In addition to this undercurrent of suspense, Sharry presents realistic emotional struggles involving Bobby’s estranged relationships with family members, seemingly ubiquitous yearnings for approval, and the pervasive distrust of government that prevailed during much of the turbulent 1970s. While maintaining a fast narrative pace, Sharry still manages to intriguingly address questions of hope, loyalty, and love. Readers will hold their breath waiting to see how it all turns out.
A tale of misplaced trust, opportunities lost, and indefatigable hope that will satisfy war vets and pacifists alike.Pub Date: June 7, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-692-40314-3
Page Count: 334
Publisher: Coccinelle Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 14, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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 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
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