A gritty action tale with a central character who’s less compelling than those in his orbit.
A young man becomes a contractor for the CIA in this action-adventure tale.
As a 13-year-old in the 1960s, Eli Rose watches I Love Lucy, wanders the Miami streets and hangs out at the Gayety Burlesque. There he meets the polished, moneyed Vicente Amarón—the man has ties to organized crime, but Eli still wants to be like “Mr. Slick.” After Eli’s father dies, he learns that he is now accountable for a business loan from the mob and payback will come through his participation in a reckless mission, financed by anti-Castro mobster Morgenthal. Vicente becomes Eli’s mentor, teaching him, among other things, how to read people. After graduating college, Eli accepts employment at an import-export firm, and his connections are exploited by those whose faith in La Lucha—the struggle to free Cuba of communism—never falters. Soon Eli meets Robert “The Redhead” Jasper, a loose cannon who brandishes a .45 and bonds with Eli through a blood ritual. On orders from Morgenthal, Eli, Jasper and Vicente depart for Cuba and nonstop action ensues until the book’s final page. Some nice turns-of-phrase establish the setting—“The air was thick with the smell of jasmine and rotting trees, and it clung to Eli like clear syrup.” Eli is appealing, particularly in his relationship with father-figure Vicente, but as complex characters, Vicente and Jasper outweigh Eli. The young man’s allegiances may be misplaced, and at times he responds as if he is numb, in spite of the carnage around him. His driving force is “kill or be killed”—not the most original credo in the world, but understandable when body parts are flying. Pacing is brisk, but not breakneck, with tension building to an eventual face-off between Eli and Jasper—just how crazy is Jasper, and how far will he go? Although Eli confronts danger in various venues, readers never doubt that he’ll survive for at least two more books in the series, removing some dramatic tension. In future installments, Eli needs to evolve more, and command center stage.
A gritty action tale with a central character who’s less compelling than those in his orbit.Pub Date: Sept. 8, 2010
ISBN: 978-0966974942
Page Count: 327
Publisher: Robert N. Erlich
Review Posted Online: June 27, 2011
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.
Life lessons.
Angie Malone, the youngest of a big, warm Italian-American family, returns to her Pacific Northwest hometown to wrestle with various midlife disappointments: her divorce, Papa’s death, a downturn in business at the family restaurant, and, above all, her childlessness. After several miscarriages, she, a successful ad exec, and husband Conlan, a reporter, befriended a pregnant young girl and planned to adopt her baby—and then the birth mother changed her mind. Angie and Conlan drifted apart and soon found they just didn’t love each other anymore. Metaphorically speaking, “her need for a child had been a high tide, an overwhelming force that drowned them. A year ago, she could have kicked to the surface but not now.” Sadder but wiser, Angie goes to work in the struggling family restaurant, bickering with Mama over updating the menu and replacing the ancient waitress. Soon, Angie befriends another young girl, Lauren Ribido, who’s eager to learn and desperately needs a job. Lauren’s family lives on the wrong side of the tracks, and her mother is a promiscuous alcoholic, but Angie knows nothing of this sad story and welcomes Lauren into the DeSaria family circle. The girl listens in, wide-eyed, as the sisters argue and make wisecracks and—gee-whiz—are actually nice to each other. Nothing at all like her relationship with her sluttish mother, who throws Lauren out when boyfriend David, en route to Stanford, gets her pregnant. Will Lauren, who’s just been accepted to USC, let Angie adopt her baby? Well, a bit of a twist at the end keeps things from becoming too predictable.
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.Pub Date: July 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-345-46750-7
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2004
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