Well-written historical fiction, in spite of ambiguous otherworldly undertones.
A woman’s discovery of her spiritual roots makes for a bizarre but compelling read.
Wealthy Coloradoan Jenny Swifter is suffering from an undefined sense of emptiness in her life when an old acquaintance sends her pieces of ruins from an archeological dig in Mesopotamia, some of which bear images with a striking resemblance to Jenny’s face. Armed with nothing but a hodgepodge of historical artifacts, Jenny embarks on a voyage to her ancestral Slovakia, unsure of what she seeks, but certain it’s there. Her travels with a Slovak guide Tonio–whose shoddy English makes him endearing and his knowledge of history prevents him from becoming a buffoonish sidekick–turn into a quest to understand how her Slavic heritage connects her to a 13th-century Middle Eastern noblewoman. The able, descriptive prose does not race through the lesser details of Jenny’s journey, but paints a picture of the foreign countryside while still building a sense of mystery, as visits to cursed ruins and half-forgotten villages keep readers’ curiosity piqued. The plot takes an unexpected turn when a visit to a mystic casts the story into Jenny’s spirit past, and follows the tumultuous history of her former self, Janina. If the reader is able to stomach the abrupt shift (and the contrived exchanges between Jenny’s hovering spirit and that of its former maid, which end many chapters), the saga of the naïve but headstrong Janina, who finally prevails after being betrayed by a lover and sold into slavery, can be as enchanting as the fairy tale-esque narrative voice. Still, an unnecessary aura of mysticism pervades the book, given that it fails to adequately explain why Jenny’s past life was conjured up in the first place.
Well-written historical fiction, in spite of ambiguous otherworldly undertones.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: 978-1-4363-1218-9
Page Count: -
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 23, 2010
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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