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SUCH TIMES

A chatty and ultimately brittle second novel (after Coe's I Love Devine, 1987) about a gay man and his two lovers in the age of AIDS. Coe tells his story through a series of flashbacks, taking readers on a tour of the unbridled gay sex scene of the 70's and early 80's. Timothy, the discursive and self-conscious narrator, a self-described ``pansy bitch of the world,'' knocks his way around Manhattan's bathhouses and sex clubs and learns some brutal lessons (e.g., he always goes to other men's houses for sex because ``no man is apt to kill you in his house, where he would be obliged to get rid of the body''). Eventually, Timothy befriends two older, more sophisticated men—Jasper, who becomes his longtime lover, and Dominick. The bulk of the story is Timothy's frivolous and onrushing account of the ``splendid'' meals, sex, and travel he and his lovers once enjoyed. (None of these characters appears to be employed in any fashion, but they live fabulously nonetheless.) Meanwhile, Timothy's faux sophistication is often cloying: ``I upgraded to first class and ranted when a negroni could not be provided. I bitched about the champagne, hissed at the stewardess that I despised Dom Perignon.'' The book takes a more serious tone when, later, the specter of AIDS looms. Jasper dies, and Dominick falls ill. When Timothy discovers he's HIV-positive, he wanders the streets, scanning faces for ``signs of illness.'' He half expects to see ``thousands of men looking like Rock Hudson, with those same frightened eyes.'' It all ends on something of an upbeat note—when Timothy decides to take his infection as a challenge to live more fully. By this point, though, most readers will be exasperated by Coe's tone-deaf prose. Timothy has an awful disease, but in the end he's too much of a twit to care about deeply.

Pub Date: Aug. 31, 1993

ISBN: 0-15-186426-8

Page Count: 344

Publisher: Harcourt

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1993

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THE THINGS WE DO FOR LOVE

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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THE VEGETARIAN

An unusual and mesmerizing novel, gracefully written and deeply disturbing.

In her first novel to be published in English, South Korean writer Han divides a story about strange obsessions and metamorphosis into three parts, each with a distinct voice.

Yeong-hye and her husband drift through calm, unexceptional lives devoid of passion or anything that might disrupt their domestic routine until the day that Yeong-hye takes every piece of meat from the refrigerator, throws it away, and announces that she's become a vegetarian. Her decision is sudden and rigid, inexplicable to her family and a society where unconventional choices elicit distaste and concern that borders on fear. Yeong-hye tries to explain that she had a dream, a horrifying nightmare of bloody, intimate violence, and that's why she won't eat meat, but her husband and family remain perplexed and disturbed. As Yeong-hye sinks further into both nightmares and the conviction that she must transform herself into a different kind of being, her condition alters the lives of three members of her family—her husband, brother-in-law, and sister—forcing them to confront unsettling desires and the alarming possibility that even with the closest familiarity, people remain strangers. Each of these relatives claims a section of the novel, and each section is strikingly written, equally absorbing whether lush or emotionally bleak. The book insists on a reader’s attention, with an almost hypnotically serene atmosphere interrupted by surreal images and frighteningly recognizable moments of ordinary despair. Han writes convincingly of the disruptive power of longing and the choice to either embrace or deny it, using details that are nearly fantastical in their strangeness to cut to the heart of the very human experience of discovering that one is no longer content with life as it is.

An unusual and mesmerizing novel, gracefully written and deeply disturbing.

Pub Date: Feb. 2, 2016

ISBN: 978-0-553-44818-4

Page Count: 192

Publisher: Hogarth

Review Posted Online: Oct. 19, 2015

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2015

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