A lighthearted novel with some interesting tidbits about chemistry and attraction and a clever criticism of how technology...
A novel about the complexities of relationships, the nature of romantic chemistry and dating in the digital age.
At the center of Diersen’s debut novel is Wisconsin-based advice columnist Roxanne Browne, who dispenses her wisdom via a syndicated column. One day, Roxanne receives a letter asking for her advice regarding online dating. Unversed in the world of Internet relationships, she decides to delve headfirst into investigating that world—particularly one site, thematchcafe.com, which distinguishes itself by claiming to use a science-based system to “match members based on common values and other key components of compatibility.” Roxanne decides to test its science via a simple plan: Both she and her beloved husband, Walker, will join the site, fill out personality surveys, then wait to be paired as a match. All does not go according to plan, however; she and Walker, happily married and with excellent chemistry, are not deemed a compatible pair—a result that launches an even deeper investigation into the site’s method of calculating compatibility. Roxanne recruits Walker to help; he’ll go on blind dates with several women the site has deemed to be good matches for him, then report on their actual, in-person compatibility. What ensues are several hilarious dates, lots of critical analysis and even more uncertainty about what makes two people the perfect pair. Within an amusing framework, Diersen’s entertaining book explores some heavy, important themes: commitment in relationships, different types of attraction, and the biological and psychological factors behind chemistry. Diersen includes many rich, well-developed, likable characters, including Alethia Dornquast, Roxanne’s narcissistic friend with an overinflated ego, and Bunny and Mack, her loving if cartoonish parents who are compared to Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz. However, she also includes the tales of several characters not directly related to the book’s plot, and the lengths of those stories and their level of detail often distract from the novel’s actual narrative. For example, Chapter 6 features an in-depth story about Renee, a former client of Roxanne’s, and her abusive relationship, which lasts for more than 10 pages but has no direct connection to the online-dating plot. More focus on the actual characters involved in investigating thematchcafe.com would serve to make the already engaging plot more compelling.
A lighthearted novel with some interesting tidbits about chemistry and attraction and a clever criticism of how technology can connect yet disconnect two people.Pub Date: Oct. 8, 2012
ISBN: 978-0615663777
Page Count: 198
Publisher: Blue Gentian Books
Review Posted Online: July 9, 2014
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
© Copyright 2024 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.
