An extended riff on deathbed scenes that doesn’t transcend its static premise.
Slavitt (Day Sailing, 2018, etc.) chronicles the final days of a dying man in this metafictional novel.
The Vidui, the author explains, is Judaism’s final prayer, to be recited in moments of imminent death. It’s “not so much a confession, although that is the usual translation of the Hebrew word, as an acknowledgment,” the narrator notes. The dying person, in this case, is Vernon Dewey (or “V. Dewey”). He lies in bed, surrounded by family, although both the room and the family are vaguely described, at first. At one point, he pretends to be asleep, so that he can hear what his relatives might say about him; he moves his left foot slightly, just to see if anyone will notice. He later considers how he feels about the people who have wronged him over the course of his life. As Vernon lies in the bed, the narrator ruminates on all things relating to death: religions, medicine, the concept of legacy, literature, grief, regret, boredom, humiliation. As loquacious as the narrator is, Vernon is the opposite. In fact, he’s having trouble thinking of things to say to those around him—or even deciding if he wants to say anything at all. (At one point, when his grandson Jacob tells him that it’s okay that they aren’t saying much to each other, Vernon says, relieved, “I was worried that you might ask me something stupid, like ‘Did you like your life?’ ”) But can he think of a worthwhile statement before the end comes? Or maybe even a prayer? The isolation of death, and the inability of language or action or sentiment to remedy that isolation, is the main theme of this novel. As a result, there’s little in the way of a traditional plot. Slavitt—or the godlike narrator, whoever he may be—admits as much several times, even applauding the reader for continuing on despite that fact. Indeed, the narrator is the main presence in the novel, and readers are asked to consider his thoughts on wordplay, Schrödinger’s cat, and famous fictional frogs before being introduced to Vernon. Thereafter, the prose is mostly clever and engaging: “Lately, Vernon has not bothered to read the obituaries, the section of the paper to which (until recently) he turned first, because that was the only real news. He was like one of those noblemen who has a chart on the wall and with each death gets closer to inheriting the throne.” Slavitt does, however, enjoy puns to a degree that may offend a certain portion of his potential readership: “Is there a plot? Actually, yes. Vernon’s parents bought a plot with room for four graves.” The novel is rather short at 125 pages, but even so, readers must work to get to the end, and despite Slavitt’s obvious gifts as a writer and thinker, it isn’t quite as satisfying as conceptual anti-novels by other writers, such as the late David Markson.
An extended riff on deathbed scenes that doesn’t transcend its static premise.Pub Date: Oct. 31, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-60489-232-1
Page Count: 125
Publisher: Livingston Press
Review Posted Online: Oct. 8, 2021
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
PROFILES
PERSPECTIVES
Once again, Hilderbrand displays her gift for making us care most about her least likable characters.
Hilderbrand’s latest cautionary tale exposes the toxic—and hilarious—impact of gossip on even the most sophisticated of islands.
Eddie and Grace Pancik are known for their beautiful Nantucket home and grounds, financed with the profits from Eddie’s thriving real estate company (thriving before the crash of 2008, that is). Grace raises pedigreed hens and, with the help of hunky landscape architect Benton Coe, has achieved a lush paradise of fowl-friendly foliage. The Panciks’ teenage girls, Allegra and Hope, suffer invidious comparisons of their looks and sex appeal, although they're identical twins. The Panciks’ friends the Llewellyns (Madeline, a blocked novelist, and her airline-pilot husband, Trevor) invested $50,000, the lion’s share of Madeline’s last advance, in Eddie’s latest development. But Madeline, hard-pressed to come up with catalog copy, much less a new novel, is living in increasingly straightened circumstances, at least by Nantucket standards: she can only afford $2,000 per month on the apartment she rents in desperate hope that “a room of her own” will prime the creative pump. Construction on Eddie’s spec houses has stalled, thanks to the aforementioned crash. Grace, who has been nursing a crush on Benton for some time, gives in and a torrid affair ensues, which she ill-advisedly confides to Madeline after too many glasses of Screaming Eagle. With her agent and publisher dropping dire hints about clawing back her advance and Eddie “temporarily” unable to return the 50K, what’s a writer to do but to appropriate Grace’s adultery as fictional fodder? When Eddie is seen entering her apartment (to ask why she rented from a rival realtor), rumors spread about him and Madeline, and after the rival realtor sneaks a look at Madeline’s rough draft (which New York is hotly anticipating as “the Playboy Channel meets HGTV”), the island threatens to implode with prurient snark. No one is spared, not even Hilderbrand herself, “that other Nantucket novelist,” nor this magazine, “the notoriously cranky Kirkus.”
Once again, Hilderbrand displays her gift for making us care most about her least likable characters.Pub Date: June 16, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-316-33452-5
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: May 20, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2015
PERSPECTIVES
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