by Brit Chism ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 4, 2017
Earnest tales with interesting ideas but uneven follow-through.
Chism’s (Medea Royal, 2016) short story collection focuses on the feminine experience, using protagonists based on old myths in modern settings.
This mixed bag of mythical retellings has a strong sense of place in the Deep South, and the tales tackle issues of gender discrimination, religious oppression, and inequality. “Medea Royal,” for example, takes a close look at the classic figure from the epic poem Argonautica as an opera singer/serial killer—a promising premise that yields a sometimes-clever recasting. However, it’s muddled by heavy-handed proclamations on the evils of organized religion, the importance of reproductive rights, and the damage of the patriarchy. Explorations of such issues can enrich a narrative and deliver important, timely commentary, but Medea, as presented here, is merely a vehicle for that exploration, rather than the nuanced villain that she could have been. The prose is uneven in these tales—sometimes sharp and other times stodgy, and the dialogue can be stilted at times. However, some do feature intriguing ideas, executed with care, and handle their settings, plot, and characterization quite beautifully. A story of an old woman haunted by the ghosts of the victims of 19th-century killer Madame LaLaurie, for instance, seems as if it’s right out of a Joe Hill horror collection. The title work takes a look at the Greek Muses’ mother, who raises nine girls alone and succumbs to Alzheimer’s disease near the end of her life. It’s perhaps the strongest story in the entire collection, and it effectively examines motherhood, the demands placed on single working mothers, and the realities of dementia. Each daughter is a vibrant, fully realized character, and Chism succinctly establishes their relationships with their mother.
Earnest tales with interesting ideas but uneven follow-through.Pub Date: Sept. 4, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-5496-5860-0
Page Count: 226
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: July 11, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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by Hanya Yanagihara ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 10, 2015
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.
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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
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by J.D. Salinger ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 15, 1951
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
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