Undisciplined if consistently entertaining account of a media sensation. But Sorrentino has burrowed deep into this violent...
A bold, multifaceted reconstruction of the aftermath of the 1974 kidnapping of heiress Patty Hearst by the Symbionese Liberation Army.
Some army: just nine soldiers, and six of them will die in the fire that accompanies a shootout with the authorities in Los Angeles. Second-novelist Sorrentino (Sound on Sound, 1995) begins his story the day before that, as Tania (Patty’s guerrilla name) fires her carbine to protect her comrades, caught shoplifting. The three then commit five successive carjackings, while elsewhere their Field Marshal requisitions—from The People—the house where his group will die. This long opening section is fine edge-of-the-seat suspense. Then Sorrentino, tinkering with the historical record but keeping the fundamentals intact, tracks Tania and the other two survivors as they settle into different safe houses in the East, return to California, rob two banks in Sacramento and get nabbed in September 1975. They’re aided by a network of sympathizers, chief among them Guy Mock, a big-talking “radical sportswriter” who smells a megabucks book deal. The point of view constantly shifts. We hear from Tania’s parents; the FBI operations chief; Guy’s brother Ernest, who’s a lush and a snitch; a bank robbery victim; and the bewildered, conservative parents of other activists. There are odd digressions: Tania waitressing, undisguised, at a Borsht Belt resort; Guy peddling his book project in New York (clumsy satire). And there’s one more scene as suspenseful as that opening, when Guy is almost killed by the paranoid General Teko. The lasting impression is that the hard-core SLA members are, in the words of their sympathizers, “fucked-up sons of bitches” with no “clear channel to the truth.” Tania is pleasingly complex, bound to the group by the existential novelty of her situation and her newfound love of firearms.
Undisciplined if consistently entertaining account of a media sensation. But Sorrentino has burrowed deep into this violent counterculture without quite achieving the insights of, say, Joan Didion.Pub Date: July 6, 2005
ISBN: 0-374-27864-4
Page Count: 528
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2005
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
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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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