A disjointed and derivative novel about gay life in Manhattan- -a second attempt by Feinberg (Eighty-Sixed, 1989) to strike sparks from the contemporary tragedy of AIDS. B.J. is already a self-described ``emotional black hole'' when he tests positive for the HIV virus. A bundle of neuroses whose narrative voice is a jittery rehash of every late-night talk-show quip, B.J. is perpetually on the make and is surrounded with others similarly obsessed. The irony of AIDS, of course, makes this a fairly frustrating lifestyle—everyone is talking about sex, but ever fewer are doing it. And so what we get, as the novel lurches from episode to episode, is chapter after chapter of missed connections: Cameron, Richard, Allan, Wendall, Roger. Counterpointing these chatty, time-killing nonhappenings—in which Feinberg recycles waiter jokes and celebrity scandals —are two grim interludes with dying friends Gordon and Seymour. Seymour's death throes are quite affecting, but since we don't meet him until page 112, when he's literally dying, his character is largely irrelevant to B.J.'s story. (In fact, the suspicion arises that until Seymour tested positive, B.J. didn't much think about him or his health.) That's the way it goes for much of the book—potential undermined by slapdash plotting and a near-total inattention to character development. There could have been a novel in this material, but as B.J. puts it: ``In the approaching-the-fin-de- siäcle manner, one uses a less exacting set of criteria in selecting possible dates. In other words, we've lowered our standards.'' This may be true for dating, but not for writing. Not for the mainstream, but not, either, destined to break any ground in the gay fiction market, although it may help pass the time on the airplane or the train.
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1991
ISBN: 0-670-83813-6
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1991
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
In this vivid and moving book, Orange articulates the challenges and complexities not only of Native Americans, but also of...
Orange’s debut novel offers a kaleidoscopic look at Native American life in Oakland, California, through the experiences and perspectives of 12 characters.
An aspiring documentary filmmaker, a young man who has taught himself traditional dance by watching YouTube, another lost in the bulk of his enormous body—these are just a few of the point-of-view characters in this astonishingly wide-ranging book, which culminates with an event called the Big Oakland Powwow. Orange, who grew up in the East Bay and is an enrolled member of the Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes of Oklahoma, knows the territory, but this is no work of social anthropology; rather, it is a deep dive into the fractured diaspora of a community that remains, in many ways, invisible to many outside of it. “We made powwows because we needed a place to be together,” he writes. “Something intertribal, something old, something to make us money, something we could work toward, for our jewelry, our songs, our dances, our drum.” The plot of the book is almost impossible to encapsulate, but that’s part of its power. At the same time, the narrative moves forward with propulsive force. The stakes are high: For Jacquie Red Feather, on her way to meet her three grandsons for the first time, there is nothing as conditional as sobriety: “She was sober again,” Orange tells us, “and ten days is the same as a year when you want to drink all the time.” For Daniel Gonzales, creating plastic guns on a 3-D printer, the only lifeline is his dead brother, Manny, to whom he writes at a ghostly Gmail account. In its portrayal of so-called “Urban Indians,” the novel recalls David Treuer’s The Hiawatha, but the range, the vision, is all its own. What Orange is saying is that, like all people, Native Americans don’t share a single identity; theirs is a multifaceted landscape, made more so by the sins, the weight, of history. That some of these sins belong to the characters alone should go without saying, a point Orange makes explicit in the novel’s stunning, brutal denouement. “People are trapped in history and history is trapped in them,” James Baldwin wrote in a line Orange borrows as an epigraph to one of the book’s sections; this is the inescapable fate of every individual here.
In this vivid and moving book, Orange articulates the challenges and complexities not only of Native Americans, but also of America itself.Pub Date: June 5, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-525-52037-5
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: March 19, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
A story both little and large and one that pulls out all the Irish stops.
The heart-expanding extremes of life—first love and last rites—are experienced by an unsettled young Dubliner spending one exceptional spring in a small Irish village.
Christy McMahon “walked this line between the comic and the poignant,” and so does Williams (History of the Rain, 2014, etc.) in his latest novel, another long, affectionate, meandering story, this one devoted to the small rural community of Faha, which is about to change forever with the coming of electricity to the parish. Delighting in the eccentricities of speech, behavior, and attitude of the local characters, Williams spins a tale of life lessons and loves new and old, as observed from the perspective of Noel Crowe, 17 when the book’s events take place, some six decades older as he narrates them. Noel’s home is in Dublin, where he was training to become a Catholic priest, but he's lost his faith and retreated to the home of his grandparents Doady and Ganga in Faha. Easter is coming, and the weather—normally infinite varieties of rain—turns sunny as electrical workers cover the countryside, erecting poles and connecting wires. Christy, a member of the electrical workforce, comes to lodge alongside Noel in Doady and Ganga's garret but has another motive: He’s here to find and seek forgiveness from the woman he abandoned at the altar 50 years earlier. While tracing this quest, Williams sets Noel on his own love trajectory as he falls first for one, then all of the daughters of the local doctor. These interactions are framed against a portrait of village life—the church, the Gaelic football, the music, the alcohol—and its personalities. Warm and whimsical, sometimes sorrowful, but always expressed in curlicues of Irish lyricism, this charming book makes varied use of its electrical metaphor, not least to express the flickering pulse of humanity.
A story both little and large and one that pulls out all the Irish stops.Pub Date: Dec. 3, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-63557-420-3
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Review Posted Online: Sept. 14, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2019
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