A suspenseful, pulse-quickening read that combines elements of psychological horror and cryptic folklore.
A young woman finds herself trapped in an unnatural crisis in Appalachia in this novel.
Walking through the woods one early spring night in 1973, 16-year-old Genevieve Delany witnesses a phenomenal scene: “Like flittering hummingbirds, seven stars flickered and darted over the night sky in unison.” Growing up with her single, working mother in a Tennessee town laden with poverty, Gen is often left under the limited supervision of her reclusive Uncle John. The night after her vision and throughout the following weeks, she becomes plagued by eerie and inexplicable events. John finds her in the woods at night, screaming and unaware of her surroundings, often with clothing askew and blood between her legs. The next day, she is always mentally disoriented. After an altercation leads to her expulsion from school, she is offered private tutoring sessions with a former teacher. Edna Stevens is a firm but kind elderly woman, forced into early retirement because of her relationship with her partner, Janice Everly. When Janice (whose behavior appears at times erratic and delusional) claims to have seen the same moving lights and attributes them to extraterrestrial visitations, Gen barely knows what to believe. Little does she know that her search for the truth will uncover not only dangerous new information, but dark secrets surrounding her family history as well. The insular setting of the Appalachian town provides rich material for this atmospheric mystery. Moody’s (His Name Was Ezra, 2018, etc.) descriptions of the surrounding woods are both beautiful and unnerving. Furthermore, the gender dynamics, social expectations, and power structures present in the tale create a telling reflection of the time period. Gen consistently proves herself to be a willful and capable character whose narration is a pleasure to read. The author captures the heat of teenage passion well and addresses the consequences with raw emotion. Although the story’s events are bizarre and sometimes disturbing, the delivery is riveting. The expert pacing will keep readers on edge from start to finish.
A suspenseful, pulse-quickening read that combines elements of psychological horror and cryptic folklore.Pub Date: Nov. 23, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-9986558-9-5
Page Count: 242
Publisher: Vivid Imagery Publishing
Review Posted Online: Jan. 6, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2020
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
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.
A violent surfacing of adolescence (which has little in common with Tarkington's earlier, broadly comic, Seventeen) has a compulsive impact.
"Nobody big except me" is the dream world of Holden Caulfield and his first person story is down to the basic, drab English of the pre-collegiate. For Holden is now being bounced from fancy prep, and, after a vicious evening with hall- and roommates, heads for New York to try to keep his latest failure from his parents. He tries to have a wild evening (all he does is pay the check), is terrorized by the hotel elevator man and his on-call whore, has a date with a girl he likes—and hates, sees his 10 year old sister, Phoebe. He also visits a sympathetic English teacher after trying on a drunken session, and when he keeps his date with Phoebe, who turns up with her suitcase to join him on his flight, he heads home to a hospital siege. This is tender and true, and impossible, in its picture of the old hells of young boys, the lonesomeness and tentative attempts to be mature and secure, the awful block between youth and being grown-up, the fright and sickness that humans and their behavior cause the challenging, the dramatization of the big bang. It is a sorry little worm's view of the off-beat of adult pressure, of contemporary strictures and conformity, of sentiment….
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.Pub Date: June 15, 1951
ISBN: 0316769177
Page Count: -
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1951
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
APPRECIATIONS
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