The characters in this subtle, beautifully crafted first novel are both believable and likable. Nelson has peopled a small Arizona town with complex, well-meaning souls who illustrate the drama of daily life. Clare has agreed to act as musical director for a show celebrating the centennial of Mirage—her aptly named hometown. This stirs up the quiet existence of the 40-year-old wife of Paul and mother of 15-year-old Jeanine, although the summer promises to be an emotional one anyway. Jeanine has her first serious boyfriend, and Clare and Paul watch uncertainly as she lurches toward womanhood. The end of the summer will bring Clare's parents' anniversary party at the same lake cabin where Clare and Paul's son Michael drowned when he was 5. In addition, Nate—the 30-year-old choreographer of the centennial show who has just broken up with his longtime girlfriend—has confided in Clare that he would like to be her lover. When the show's director has a heart attack, Clare and Nate take over together. Their relationship grows closer and more precarious, and several illicit kisses are exchanged. Particularly crystalline are the passages where Clare watches Jeanine maturing and at the same time reminisces about her own early sexual experiences and curiosities, and expresses surprise over her daughter's vast knowledge of intimate matters. When Clare visits the library, hoping to find a book that will help her discuss sex with Jeanine, she recalls that she tried the same thing when her daughter was 10. ``The text was intended to connect with young adolescents, but instead slid down that merciless precipice that leads to the final resting place of the uncool cool.'' Nelson consistently captures the right amount of fear, resignation, and sometimes a tinge of jealousy, in Clare's thoughts. Fine, understated domestic fiction in the best sense. (First serial to Redbook)
Pub Date: May 1, 1994
ISBN: 1-878448-58-7
Page Count: 307
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 1994
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
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