Despite the rousing historical background, this sentimental orphan tale remains grim.
A mentally disabled boy tries to navigate his way through World War II–era Britain in this historical novel.
Spruzen’s (Lily Takes the Field, 2013, etc.) latest work begins during the Blitz; teenage Jamie Jenkins resides with his grandmother, who makes a scarce living cleaning houses, and his abusive cousin Roy Beck. Jamie’s mental “slowness” makes him oblivious to much of the depravity that goes on around him, but a German bomb destroys any protection from the real world he might have had. After the attack, Jamie’s life takes a Dickensian turn. He loses his grandmother and is passed from one terrible guardian to another, including a murderous farmer and an unfeeling home for the disabled. Meanwhile, Roy finds out Jamie knows one of his dark secrets and begins tracking him down to protect it. Eventually, their journeys intersect with a German spy’s mission, and Jamie faces life-or-death consequences. Along the way, he struggles to understand each situation he finds himself in and, with the help of a few kind friends, learns to leave his own mark on the world despite his many disadvantages. The well-researched story delivers some well-rounded characters and a few surprises. Although Jamie is mostly portrayed as a stereotypical innocent, simple-minded victim à la Oliver Twist, he gains some agency toward the book’s end as he constantly strives to make himself “more clever.” Unfortunately, he still spends most of the novel being shuffled from one terrible experience to another with very little say in the matter, which makes for a disheartening read. “A little of this and a little of that. That’s people,” Jamie observes about human morality. Yet far too many of the characters are only one thing—angelic martyrs or evil tyrants. And Jamie remains trapped between them, constantly being abused by the latter and saved by the former.
Despite the rousing historical background, this sentimental orphan tale remains grim.Pub Date: Aug. 1, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-63393-268-5
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Koehler Books
Review Posted Online: July 14, 2016
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 first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.
Pub Date: July 11, 1960
ISBN: 0060935464
Page Count: 323
Publisher: Lippincott
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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