This novel’s romantic problems often fall into routine patterns, but Leuthold’s insights into the transformative power of...
Leuthold’s debut novel explores the lives and loves of an author and one of her devoted readers.
Alexandria Zenobia “Xan” Alexander enjoys her successful career as a writer. Under the pen name XZA, she’s published several edgy, controversial novels that explore the challenges faced by young women. She’s strong and independent, particularly when it comes to relationships. At a book signing, she impulsively flirts with a handsome book reviewer named Michael Singer. Ten years later, Xan is living with him and struggling to find the perfect ending to her latest book. At the same time, she’s trying to come to terms with her past in order to understand why her relationship with Michael has endured. As Xan’s story unfolds, Leuthold offers a parallel narrative about a college student named Jessie. When she receives an unexpected gift of one of Xan’s novels from a former student named Willa, it reignites their friendship. As they bond over the book, Jessie starts to re-evaluate her school and career goals and her on-again, off-again relationship with her unsupportive boyfriend, Dick. Jessie provides an intriguing foil for Xan; although they’re at different stages in their lives, both question why they’re staying in their respective relationships. Unfortunately, these relationships also provide some of the book’s weaker moments. Michael is the perfect lover, caring, loyal and supportive, while Dick is rude, boorish and belittling, which leads to clichéd dilemmas, such as Xan wondering why she’s unable to say “I love you” to Michael and Jessie reflecting on why she clings to her unhealthy relationship. However, the author does skillfully keep the two main plots and multiple supporting characters clear and cohesive while also weaving in passages from XZA’s books. As the chapters alternate between Xan’s and Jessie’s stories, the fictional book passages show Xan’s character and her point of view as a writer.
This novel’s romantic problems often fall into routine patterns, but Leuthold’s insights into the transformative power of literature keep the narrative from becoming predictable.Pub Date: Nov. 24, 2013
ISBN: 978-0991131914
Page Count: 354
Publisher: Green Hill Press
Review Posted Online: Feb. 26, 2014
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
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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