Second novel in Lumley's Vampire World series (Blood Brothers, 1992), or subseries, but apparently seventh in the overall Necroscope series, each volume a doorstopper. Lumley hacks out his vampire universe with a plot of inhuman complexity that few could possibly keep straight—perhaps not even the author himself. Written in surreal impasto, his introductory synopsis is a crowded symbolist canvas whose weirdly lighted details escape a larger general meaning for new readers. At this point in the cycle, Nathan and Nestor, twin sons of Harry Keogh the Necroscope, a vampire hunter from a parallel vampire world who talks with the dead and zips swiftly through time and space, are now enemies in the Sunside/Starside world. Harry was an alien who sired his twins on Nana Kiklu of the Szgany Lidesci, but the twins have matured into opposites, with Nathan fey and gifted with weird power, and Nestor strong and lusty and now set on being lord of the Wamphyri (vampires)! We last saw Nestor snatched up by a flying monster, dropped into a land of lepers, then escaping, though into hideous dreams of the future, while his lieutenant Zahar had captured Nathan and tossed him into the Starside Gate, portal to hell-lands from which no man or monster had ever returned. Now Nathan is trapped on earth and being pursued by a maniacal psychic bent on murdering him, while a band of British psychics, who first became aware of the Keoghs back in 1990 (it's now 2006), protect him. Nestor, meanwhile, though a victim of nightmares, grows ever more vile in expanding his power, now torturing the dead (with whom he can talk in deadspeak), now raping girls while sucking them dry from within. Lumley's High Purple storytelling delirium remains undimmed.
Pub Date: Aug. 1, 1993
ISBN: 0-312-85358-0
Page Count: 480
Publisher: Tor
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1993
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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