Awards & Accolades

Our Verdict

  • Our Verdict
  • GET IT

Next book

24 HOURS OF THE PHOENIX

A NOVEL

Sharp writing, a challenging mystery, and an exceedingly likable protagonist.

Awards & Accolades

Our Verdict

  • Our Verdict
  • GET IT

A debut novel focuses on a woman who suddenly discovers she is dying.

How would you spend the next 24 hours if you knew they were to be your last? When Phoenix “Finn” Helen Collins wakes up in an Albuquerque, New Mexico, hospital bed, she overhears two men speaking outside her room. They are discussing her impending death—“Twenty-four hours? Maybe less.” She doesn’t know how she got there or why she is dying. And nobody will give her the answers. There is only one thing to do: disconnect all the beeping wires and tubes, get out of bed, and find out what’s going on. She dresses in her blood-covered clothes and exits the hospital, snagging a taxi. In her jacket pocket, she finds her wallet, which contains her driver’s license. She gives the cab driver the address on her license. Her name is listed on the apartment directory, together with someone named Cummings: “Oh, whoa, Walt Cummings. Of course.”  Little pieces of memory begin to jump in and out. She used to be with Matt Bailerg until he found her in bed with Walt. There’s so much to learn and so many amends to make—and so little time. She heads to her car but it won’t start. Enter Gabriel, the sexy, helpful stranger who will keep showing up whenever Finn needs him most. Readers will struggle along with Finn as she tries to make sense of what is happening to her. Through Bertaud’s articulate, edgy prose, Finn shines as the charming narrator of her own madcap journey—funny, sarcastic, frightened, tough, and tender. “I want to know the reason,” she tells readers, referring to her terminal condition. “I need to know. It doesn’t have to be the whole story; a brief summary would suffice.” Disjointed memories move the mind-bending, baffling, and delightful story back and forth between past and present. The present is filled with a plethora of complicated events that blur the line between fantasy and reality. The pieces never quite fit together; everything is slightly askew. But hang on until the end. The final twist is worth the chaotic ride.

Sharp writing, a challenging mystery, and an exceedingly likable protagonist.

Pub Date: Nov. 3, 2018

ISBN: 978-1-73286-560-0

Page Count: 335

Publisher: Time Tunnel Media

Review Posted Online: Nov. 14, 2018

Categories:

Awards & Accolades

Likes

  • Readers Vote
  • 49


Our Verdict

  • Our Verdict
  • GET IT


  • Kirkus Reviews'
    Best Books Of 2015


  • Kirkus Prize
  • Kirkus Prize
    winner


  • National Book Award Finalist

Next book

A LITTLE LIFE

The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.

Awards & Accolades

Likes

  • Readers Vote
  • 49


Our Verdict

  • Our Verdict
  • GET IT


  • Kirkus Reviews'
    Best Books Of 2015


  • Kirkus Prize
  • Kirkus Prize
    winner


  • National Book Award Finalist

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

Categories:
Next book

THE THINGS WE DO FOR LOVE

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

Categories:
Close Quickview