From the spry octogenarians who compose the town’s old guard to the scheming Darlene who has her hat set for Will, Holton’s...
Holton (Beach Trip, 2009) takes a trip to a small Tennessee town and finds a colorful cast with a long-hidden secret among the azalea bushes and magnolia trees.
Ava’s mother, the fanciful Clotilde, has died, her love affair has gone bad and her dreams of writing a novel are unrealized. When Will, an old friend from college days, invites her to come South for the summer, live with his elderly but well-to-do aunts and write her novel, Ava accepts. Soon she’s chucked the boyfriend and her job back in Chicago and headed for Woodburn, Tenn. Named after her friend Will’s family, Woodburn is a typical Southern town, peopled by colorful Southerners: There are Will’s aunts, the sweet, cat-loving Fanny, married to her childhood sweetheart, Maitland, and Josephine, the spinster with an iron will; Clara, the African-American who lives in the cottage behind the Woodburn’s grand home; Alice, whose gay son, Fraser, channels Edgar Allan Poe; and Darlene, the failed blond beauty queen who has her sights set on Will. And then, of course, there is Jake, who is also a Woodburn, but from the other branch of the family. Jake’s father was the son of Charlie Woodburn, a ne’er-do-well who married Fanny back during Prohibition. Charlie’s death from drowning decades ago fascinates Ava, who is convinced his demise was not the accident everyone seems to think it was. Holton skillfully weaves the stories of Ava and her vagabond early life with that of irrepressible but equally irresponsible Clotilde, together with those of Charlie and the Woodburn girls. The fun, witty dialogue strikes the right note, as does the attention to detail, from the iced sweet tea to the casual conversations of Woodburn’s residents.
From the spry octogenarians who compose the town’s old guard to the scheming Darlene who has her hat set for Will, Holton’s novel is brimming with unforgettable characters, smart conversations and an engaging mystery that makes spending a summer in the South a tantalizing proposition.Pub Date: May 24, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-345-50601-6
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: April 5, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2011
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
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
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