A litany of lurid and repulsive events involving a female prisoner.
A young woman who escapes a life of ghastly abuse finds herself once again held captive, facing a 24-hour deadline to rejoin her victimizer or be killed.
The novel’s chapters count down from Hour 24. The narrator, known as Angel, is bound up on the concrete floor of a warehouse far from any chance of rescue. Her captor, who has controlled her since age 7, is a monstrous man whom she hates “so much I never gave him a name.” Names are arbitrary in this world. Her captor is only “the man,” who purchased her from the home of her crack-addicted mother where she was kept in a closet. Imprisoned in a basement room for the next eight years, she had human contact with a series of minders, including Night Man, Day Man, and Cleaning Lady. Only the evil man’s son is given a name, albeit an invented one. He is called Isaac and becomes her savior and love. Although never detailed explicitly, the unnamed man is apparently a procurer in Nevada with a stable of prostitutes and extensive connections to organized crime, government officials, and law enforcement. The presumption is that he is all-powerful so there is no escaping his reach. He is grooming Angel, among other girls, to be a prostitute, enslaved permanently to his business. She is ultimately freed through a Byzantine escape plot but that state is short-lived. Beckort (Kingston’s Promise, 2014, etc.) has effectively built up the tension of Angel’s final ordeal through the chapters’ countdown. But the book’s content is primarily a repetition of horrors—countless rapes, assaults, humiliations, and beatings. Almost every character is unrelentingly grotesque and seems beyond redemption. The sinister man hisses, “Every part of you is so sweet, and you taste the best after you’ve been beaten.” Another, called Goon 2, says to Angel: “It’s going to be a lot of fun killing you.” Little more is learned in this tale of torture.
A litany of lurid and repulsive events involving a female prisoner.Pub Date: Feb. 22, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-9912764-4-8
Page Count: 288
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Oct. 23, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.
Sisters work together to solve a child-abandonment case.
Ellie and Julia Cates have never been close. Julia is shy and brainy; Ellie gets by on charm and looks. Their differences must be tossed aside when a traumatized young girl wanders in from the forest into their hometown in Washington. The sisters’ professional skills are put to the test. Julia is a world-renowned child psychologist who has lost her edge. She is reeling from a case that went publicly sour. Though she was cleared of all wrongdoing, Julia’s name was tarnished, forcing her to shutter her Beverly Hills practice. Ellie Barton is the local police chief in Rain Valley, who’s never faced a tougher case. This is her chance to prove she is more than just a fading homecoming queen, but a scarcity of clues and a reluctant victim make locating the girl’s parents nearly impossible. Ellie places an SOS call to her sister; she needs an expert to rehabilitate this wild-child who has been living outside of civilization for years. Confronted with her professional demons, Julia once again has the opportunity to display her talents and salvage her reputation. Hannah (The Things We Do for Love, 2004, etc.) is at her best when writing from the girl’s perspective. The feral wolf-child keeps the reader interested long after the other, transparent characters have grown tiresome. Hannah’s torturously over-written romance passages are stale, but there are surprises in store as the sisters set about unearthing Alice’s past and creating a home for her.
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.Pub Date: March 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-345-46752-3
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2005
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