Although this story has its heart in the right place, readers may want to seek out other fiction that shows greater respect...
A middle-aged man falls in love with a young transgender woman in this experimental debut novel that seems more concerned with anatomy than humanity.
Diego is a 38-year-old husband and father living in Pennsylvania who’s restlessly self-obsessed and full of anger and disappointment. He’s a confessed homophobe who one day enters a “chat room for gays,” planning to spend time spying on whom he considers “Godless mistakes.” He’s welcomed into the chat room by “Lydia 19,” who reveals herself to be a charming transgender woman living in Las Vegas. She’s openhearted and talkative, educating Diego about real-life figures, such as Angie Zapata, a transgender woman who was murdered in 2008, and Tyler Clementi, a gay college student who committed suicide in 2010. Diego is moved, despite himself, but tries to dismiss his emotions. Lydia shares that she’s “a woman trapped in a man’s body,” which piques Diego’s curiosity. Soon they graduate from chat rooms to phone calls and text messages, and Lydia tells him her life story, which includes a father who abandoned her, a mother who became a “voluptuous alcoholic,” and a cousin who raped her. Diego’s sympathy for Lydia grows into an obsession, and when he gets an opportunity to attend a conference in Vegas, he takes it. He wrestles with his guilt in poetic terms (“the guilt that sprouts inside of me and melts the world I thought I understood”) that feature a recurring cicada motif. It’s only by meeting in person that Diego and Lydia find the true depth of their relationship. The novel’s title refers to the name of Diego’s dreamlike inner world, a heady description of which opens (and clouds) the beginning of the novel. The book’s depiction of Diego and Lydia’s friendship is compelling. However, it often feels contrived, and Diego’s language is frequently belittling, putting “her” in quotation marks when referring to Lydia and wondering about her “phallus.” It’s also startling to read a narrative in which a trans woman has such little agency. The novel’s final chapters aim for redemption, alternating between Lydia and Diego and allowing Lydia’s perspective to finally enter the story. Ultimately, though, not even the ending can bring nuance to such a dense tale.
Although this story has its heart in the right place, readers may want to seek out other fiction that shows greater respect for transgender people.Pub Date: Jan. 24, 2012
ISBN: 978-1-4681-7846-3
Page Count: 118
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Feb. 29, 2016
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
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The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with...
Talk-show queen takes tumble as millions jeer.
Nora Bridges is a wildly popular radio spokesperson for family-first virtues, but her loyal listeners don't know that she walked out on her husband and teenaged daughters years ago and didn't look back. Now that a former lover has sold racy pix of naked Nora and horny himself to a national tabloid, her estranged daughter Ruby, an unsuccessful stand-up comic in Los Angeles, has been approached to pen a tell-all. Greedy for the fat fee she's been promised, Ruby agrees and heads for the San Juan Islands, eager to get reacquainted with the mom she plans to betray. Once in the family homestead, nasty Ruby alternately sulks and glares at her mother, who is temporarily wheelchair-bound as a result of a post-scandal car crash. Uncaring, Ruby begins writing her side of the story when she's not strolling on the beach with former sweetheart Dean Sloan, the son of wealthy socialites who basically ignored him and his gay brother Eric. Eric, now dying of cancer and also in a wheelchair, has returned to the island. This dismal threesome catch up on old times, recalling their childhood idylls on the island. After Ruby's perfect big sister Caroline shows up, there's another round of heartfelt talk. Nora gradually reveals the truth about her unloving husband and her late father's alcoholism, which led her to seek the approval of others at the cost of her own peace of mind. And so on. Ruby is aghast to discover that she doesn't know everything after all, but Dean offers her subdued comfort. Happy endings await almost everyone—except for readers of this nobly preachy snifflefest.
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with syrupy platitudes about life and love.Pub Date: March 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-609-60737-5
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2001
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