Bram's fourth novel (In Memory of Angel Clare, 1989, etc.) dramatizes 35 years in the life of a career diplomat who comes out of the closet; the backdrop consists of political intrigue in the Philippines during the Marcos era. The result is an authoritative, very readable (and mostly mainstream) novel. Jim Goodall joins the Foreign Service in the early 1950's, at the height of the McCarthy era, when suspected homosexuals are hounded from the service as security risks. Goodall is repressed, vaguely attracted to men but unwilling to admit it, until the firing of one diplomat for ``perversion'' causes Goodall and fellow diplomat Dave Wheeler, bisexual, to discuss Goodall's sex life, or lack thereof, resulting in Goodall's first real sexual experience at a party/orgy. The personal narrative is rounded out by Goodall's sister's family, particularly by niece Meg, who loses a boyfriend to ``Uncle Jim''—increasingly active sexually—but stays close to him. Bram rotates between personal instances and political ones- -Goodall is serving as a diplomat in difficult times, and Bram evocatively records Philippine and Vietnamese crises in convincing fashion. Meanwhile, Goodall goes to gay bars, to the baths, and learns to enjoy one-night stands, while Meg engages in affairs and becomes a historian. Their two lives come together when she decides to do research in Manila. They both get involved with the Marcoses, Goodall with Ferdinand (and sexually with Imelda's hairdresser) and Meg with Imelda. A good deal of intrigue isn't resolved until Imelda helps out, in fact, and both Goodall and Meg save a life by relinquishing some potent information that could damage the Marcos regime. An epilogue, however, makes it clear that both principals prosper while the Marcos regime vanishes. Some of this is programmatic, but Bram convincingly re-creates a historical moment from a gay perspective.
Pub Date: April 27, 1992
ISBN: 1-55611-231-9
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Donald Fine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 1992
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
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
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