They don’t write melodramas like this any more. A posthumous humdinger from Cookson (Kate Hannigan’s Girl, 2001, etc.).
Sweet young Irene Forrester sang operetta to earn her modest living—until she met Edward Mortimer Baindor, the temperamental son of a wealthy businessman.
Jilted by her first lover, Irene meekly agrees to marry Edward. He’s rich, masterful, and 14 years her senior, but he can take better care of her than a younger man might, or so says the Baindor family solicitor. Irene bears him a son, but Edward allows her little time with the boy. To all appearances, Edward is a pillar of respectability, but behind closed doors he’s a sadist who ties and flogs his wife, then bites her flesh before raping her. Unable to bear his abuse, Irene plans escape when a childhood friend, now a young man, comes to her dressing room—and Edward bursts in and assumes the worst. He beats them both mercilessly, sues for custody of his son, and consigns Irene to an asylum. Unhinged, she nonetheless gets free and is rescued by Bella Morgan, a loquacious Liverpudlian who, with Geordie Joe, a giant of a man, and Pimple Face, runs a fruit stall in front of a house her former employer left her. Although Irene communicates chiefly in gestures, Bella understands that she wants to create a kip house for men able to pay a shilling or two and help out when needed. World War II raids bring many in need of shelter—how to feed and house them all? A secret stash of money is discovered (apparently Bella’s former employer was a diamond smuggler), and happy years pass until a minor mishap lands Pimple Face in hospital and his doctor is—Richard Baindor! Irene swoons on hearing her son's name, and the truth is revealed at last. Aghast at his mother’s fragility (she’s near death), Richard at last confronts his monstrous father, now a peer and a multimillionaire. . . .
They don’t write melodramas like this any more. A posthumous humdinger from Cookson (Kate Hannigan’s Girl, 2001, etc.).Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-7432-2761-1
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2001
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
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Dated sermonizing on career versus motherhood, and conflict driven by characters’ willed helplessness, sap this tale of...
Lifelong, conflicted friendship of two women is the premise of Hannah’s maudlin latest (Magic Hour, 2006, etc.), again set in Washington State.
Tallulah “Tully” Hart, father unknown, is the daughter of a hippie, Cloud, who makes only intermittent appearances in her life. Tully takes refuge with the family of her “best friend forever,” Kate Mularkey, who compares herself unfavorably with Tully, in regards to looks and charisma. In college, “TullyandKate” pledge the same sorority and major in communications. Tully has a life goal for them both: They will become network TV anchorwomen. Tully lands an internship at KCPO-TV in Seattle and finagles a producing job for Kate. Kate no longer wishes to follow Tully into broadcasting and is more drawn to fiction writing, but she hesitates to tell her overbearing friend. Meanwhile a love triangle blooms at KCPO: Hard-bitten, irresistibly handsome, former war correspondent Johnny is clearly smitten with Tully. Expecting rejection, Kate keeps her infatuation with Johnny secret. When Tully lands a reporting job with a Today-like show, her career shifts into hyperdrive. Johnny and Kate had started an affair once Tully moved to Manhattan, and when Kate gets pregnant with daughter Marah, they marry. Kate is content as a stay-at-home mom, but frets about being Johnny’s second choice and about her unrealized writing ambitions. Tully becomes Seattle’s answer to Oprah. She hires Johnny, which spells riches for him and Kate. But Kate’s buttons are fully depressed by pitched battles over slutwear and curfews with teenaged Marah, who idolizes her godmother Tully. In an improbable twist, Tully invites Kate and Marah to resolve their differences on her show, only to blindside Kate by accusing her, on live TV, of overprotecting Marah. The BFFs are sundered. Tully’s latest attempt to salvage Cloud fails: The incorrigible, now geriatric hippie absconds once more. Just as Kate develops a spine, she’s given some devastating news. Will the friends reconcile before it’s too late?
Dated sermonizing on career versus motherhood, and conflict driven by characters’ willed helplessness, sap this tale of poignancy.Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2008
ISBN: 978-0-312-36408-3
Page Count: 496
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2007
BOOK TO SCREEN
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