A delightful romp through the dark, twisted lives of drug dealers, pilots and their lovers.
A darkly comical tale of one man’s poor choice and the resulting fallout.
A steamy beach read, Hunt’s debut novel will appeal to men and women alike. Sex, drugs and intrigue intertwine as Ian MacAran, a young, good-looking pilot, struggles to navigate his life with the same precision he uses in the air. He’s eager to move on from his last relationship and desperate to sell a house he can no longer afford when his door is opened one day by a quirky, energetic man named Mick Dale. Mick, a contractor, has his eye on Ian’s house as a fixer-upper, but upon learning that Ian is a pilot, he suddenly has his eye on a lot more. After convincing Ian to give him a few flying lessons, Mick finally reveals the truth behind his pursuit: He’s an accomplished drug dealer, and via Ian’s plane, the two would be able to transport cocaine directly from Mexico at a tremendous profit. Initially, the thought horrifies Ian, but Mick is persuasive, and soon Ian is addicted to the thrill of the scam—not to mention the money that allows him to keep the house and live well beyond his standard. As Ian gets embroiled in drug trafficking, his love life gets complicated, too. After meeting the quiet, trusting and beautiful Sandra, Ian feels that he has, perhaps, at last found love. But another woman, Bernie Selleca, comes onto the scene, determined to seduce Ian away from Sandra to suit her own purposes. Hunt’s novel twists through various perspectives and plot shifts, leaving readers almost breathless. With the surprising ups and downs, the always-entertaining story takes on a feeling much like the plane rides described in its pages. Characters are memorable for their zany antics, especially Ian, who, though flawed, proves to be a likable, sympathetic hero. As he plummets further into his mistakes, his misadventures make for a high-flying, action-packed read.
A delightful romp through the dark, twisted lives of drug dealers, pilots and their lovers.Pub Date: June 13, 2013
ISBN: 978-0615722979
Page Count: 672
Publisher: 1rpm Press
Review Posted Online: Aug. 21, 2013
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.
A violent surfacing of adolescence (which has little in common with Tarkington's earlier, broadly comic, Seventeen) has a compulsive impact.
"Nobody big except me" is the dream world of Holden Caulfield and his first person story is down to the basic, drab English of the pre-collegiate. For Holden is now being bounced from fancy prep, and, after a vicious evening with hall- and roommates, heads for New York to try to keep his latest failure from his parents. He tries to have a wild evening (all he does is pay the check), is terrorized by the hotel elevator man and his on-call whore, has a date with a girl he likes—and hates, sees his 10 year old sister, Phoebe. He also visits a sympathetic English teacher after trying on a drunken session, and when he keeps his date with Phoebe, who turns up with her suitcase to join him on his flight, he heads home to a hospital siege. This is tender and true, and impossible, in its picture of the old hells of young boys, the lonesomeness and tentative attempts to be mature and secure, the awful block between youth and being grown-up, the fright and sickness that humans and their behavior cause the challenging, the dramatization of the big bang. It is a sorry little worm's view of the off-beat of adult pressure, of contemporary strictures and conformity, of sentiment….
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.Pub Date: June 15, 1951
ISBN: 0316769177
Page Count: -
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1951
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
APPRECIATIONS
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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