A luminous debut novel set in turn-of-the-century Galveston, Texas, the first fiction from this small literary press. Taylor, author of a collection of essays (Into the Open: Studies in Genius and Modernity, not reviewed), writes in a richly poetic language steeped in time and place, a powerful style that well supports the tale of the Mehmel family, ``a people for whom life had become too hard.'' The Mehmels, like many other Eastern European Jewish families, immigrated to the port city of Galveston at the end of the 19th century. Having established a successful European-style brewery there, the elder Mehmel believes his family to be firmly rooted in the adopted country. But then his eldest son is swept away in a flood, his other son, a fey aesthete, seems interested only in bird-watching, and the legacy is left to teenage Felix, the son of the drowned heir. Felix, too, however, is a dreamer of uncertain sexual orientation, forever studying Latin texts with a middle-aged intellectual woman who openly lives with another woman. While trying to keep their foothold in the new land, the Mehmels are also struggling with their old faith. The local rabbi, another Eastern European ÇmigrÇ, pleads with the Mehmel widow to keep the old ways while he himself wrestles with religious doubts that have plagued him since he was a rabbinical student. These doubts were sown by a nomadic stranger who gave him questioning texts, and this same Elijah-like figure may or may not be the drifter who appears in Galveston at a time when all faith lapses. Taylor's magical, expressive language pulls the dense themes rapidly along, and even though he does sometimes poeticize to the point of confusing the action, his writing in general is engaging enough to make for tolerance in the reader. A beautifully rendered, moving, original debut. (Author tour)
Pub Date: Oct. 15, 1995
ISBN: 1-885983-04-2
Page Count: 284
Publisher: Turtle Point
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1995
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
© 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.
