Neither romantic nor suspenseful, really, in a crossover that tries hard but doesn’t quite work.
A hybrid second novel from Bellacera (Border Crossings, not reviewed) awkwardly mixes the sighs of a bodice-ripper with the mayhem of a political thriller, charting as it goes along the story of an American journalist who falls in love with an Irish rock star haunted by old ties to the IRA.
Fonda (named after Henry, not Jane) Blayne, the newest employee of Spotlight, a rock-music magazine, finds herself doing a photo story on popular Irish rocker Devin O’ Keefe. The year is 1990, and Devin, who came to fame when he performed at a Live-Aid concert in London in the ’80s, is to tour the US over the summer. Born in Belfast, Devin witnessed sectarian violence firsthand when, at the age of ten, he participated in a march and saw his older brother killed. But unlike some of his compatriots, he has dedicated his life and music to nonviolence. He’s well-meaning if too trusting, however, for he’s in fact being used by the IRA, which diverts his contributions to charity into their own coffers in a campaign of violence that’s being masterminded by Caitlyn, whom he loved and married as a student, but who’s now a ruthless terrorist. Fonda, who speaks and thinks in clichés (“like a zestful quench of cool water onto a parched throat, Fonda felt the heat of Devin’s lean body against hers”) is soon in love, and Devin proposes marriage as the tour continues. But the IRA and its agents, some playing in the band itself, have their own agenda, and when Caitlyn, who thinks Devin is a traitor to the cause for preaching peace, learns about him and Fonda, she heads to the US to exact her own nasty revenge—and a plucky but somewhat bewildered Fonda learns more about Irish politics than your average rock music journalist needs.
Neither romantic nor suspenseful, really, in a crossover that tries hard but doesn’t quite work.Pub Date: June 1, 2000
ISBN: 0-312-87451-0
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Forge
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2000
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.
Pub Date: July 11, 1960
ISBN: 0060935464
Page Count: 323
Publisher: Lippincott
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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