Interesting characters checked by a vague, self-help style of writing.
After researching relationships and intimacy, debut author Jory (Teacher Family Studies/Berry College) created the fictional town of Lovejoy in order to “explore what it means to love and be loved in our contemporary times.”
Throughout these short stories, Jory’s recurring cast explores the flaws that often bedevil relationships of all sorts. Liliana, a traumatized wife who recently had a mastectomy, has trouble dealing with jealousy now that her husband spends so much time with his sexy personal assistant, Alexa. Johanna, born with ambiguous genitalia, finally lets a handsome doctor into her life only to discover that he has a major secret. The bitter, self-pitying Clare refuses to take responsibility for either her relationship with her parents or the fatal car accident she caused. Maria transforms her body and temperament after her 35th birthday to bring some danger and excitement back into her life. Lastly, straightforward accountant Tony comes to understand sacrifice and lasting commitment when everyone tells him his beloved wife is gone, but he knows better. The stories all intertwine. Maria is Alexa’s sister; Clare’s lawyer is Tony’s brother; and they all gravitate toward the local coffee shop. These connections give the impression of a larger narrative, but they never deliver anything more than fleeting references. Jory, a professor and couples counselor, alternates between a rushed, present-tense narration and first-person accounts from characters’ diary entries and letters—leaving many elements to feel underdeveloped. For example, skating over the development of Johanna and Brendan’s relationship, Jory writes, “The next year flies by, peppered with many falling-in-love firsts.” While there are interesting ideas here that may spark introspection, the collection doesn’t satisfactorily address the questions it raises.
Interesting characters checked by a vague, self-help style of writing.Pub Date: Oct. 4, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-73273-692-4
Page Count: 268
Publisher: Foxford International Books and Media
Review Posted Online: Dec. 15, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
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