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LADY OF ICE AND FIRE

Alexander stumbles badly in his second outing (God's Adamantine Fate, 1993) with a tepid tale of industrial espionage and international terrorism. Scientist George Jeffers has developed a new enzyme that promises to be the building block for numerous industrial applications, including gene-splitting and possible cancer cures. Now, however, it's disappeared in Europe—along with its courier. Traveling to Boston to provide a CIA operative with background information on the enzyme, Jeffers meets Taylor Redding, an adventurer looking for another challenge. She saves him from an assassination attempt, and the pair decide that they must track down the enzyme themselves. Their search takes them to Switzerland, Germany, the Netherlands, and Iceland, in all of which they leave behind the standard body count as they fend off the many bad guys trying to kill them. Then, with the aid of a German scientist, Jeffers and Redding discover that the enzyme is somehow connected to a fascist political organization in Germany, to the former East German Secret Police, and to a terrorist group (with ties to the KGB) trying to smuggle a load of weapons into Iceland. Naturally, these thugs to a one want the scientist and his protector dead. Jeffers is completely inept throughout, while Redding turns out to be an expert pilot, smuggler, knife fighter, and marksman who also speaks numerous languages and knows the history and politics of every country they visit—all at the ripe old age of 25. Meanwhile, the plot clunks along unmercifully, one improbable scene following another. The wild coincidences and plodding narrative could be efforts to satirize the genre that Ludlum and others have worked so well, except that the novel is far too thin and wan for even traces of irony to run in its veins. Sluggish, bloodless high points—and few of those.

Pub Date: July 15, 1995

ISBN: 1-55611-449-4

Page Count: 352

Publisher: Donald Fine

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 1995

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A LITTLE LIFE

The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.

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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 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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