An engaging and lifelike representation of two families at a turning point.
Parallel stories explore the outcome of an unusual adoption from the perspective of mother and daughter.
Stewart’s (Saving Love, 2019, etc.) latest novel alternates between two women struggling with life-changing secrets. Gwen Fox is a 25-year-old graduate student pursuing a degree in genetic counseling. At birth, she was adopted by a loving couple who provided her with a wonderful upbringing. Yet in the middle of a seemingly normal morning, Gwen suffers a panic attack so overpowering that she requires hospitalization. In the subsequent weeks, she acknowledges a potent desire to discover the truth about her origins. Little does she suspect that her own biological mother, a woman named Leslie Laudon, is experiencing personal upheaval of her own as she gets ready to send her youngest child to college. Every decision in Leslie’s life has been made with the interests of her children at heart—even the baby girl whom she chose to give away. Yet as time marches forward, she feels increasingly that her needs are coming second to those of her dismissive and controlling husband. The circumstances of Gwen’s adoption are kept shrouded in secrecy until the very end along with a second, even more surprising twist. Stewart has a knack for creating rich, complicated characters. One standout is Leslie’s daughter, Kerry, who is defiantly vocal about the issues within her family and laudably supportive of her mother. The author treads carefully around the subject of adoption, respectfully noting systematic issues while preserving the emotional complexities of Gwen’s experience. Another intriguing feature is the romantic subplot between Gwen and Griffin, her brothers’ childhood friend. Having been raised in an abusive home, Griffin provides a unique foil to Gwen. Their innocent, upbeat chemistry deepens as they spend time searching for information about Gwen’s past. Stewart’s writing style tends occasionally toward the dramatic, as in this passage about Leslie: “It was hard to stuff it all down. It had always been hard. The ache radiating from her body was reminiscent of a bad sunburn. She was both hot and cold. Sensitive to the slightest touch. A tiny shift of her own body felt excruciating.” Regardless, the author has produced a fast and enjoyable read. The resolution is satisfying but leaves room for future stories. Fans will be eager to revisit the Fox and Laudon households for a sequel.
An engaging and lifelike representation of two families at a turning point.Pub Date: Sept. 2, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-68994-767-1
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: Oct. 31, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
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
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