by David Israel ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 25, 2005
Israel is a budding comic talent, a guide so likable we overlook the familiarity of the terrain. Think of this as a tasty...
Breezy comic guide to dating, with a touching love story nestled inside.
The title does not mislead. Professional musician Israel’s first novel really can be enjoyed by both genders, even though the second-person narrator, that’s you, is a guy in search of a “snowflake” (the soulmate, the perfect fit). And the second-person narration doesn’t wear out its welcome, as the pronoun is often suppressed in favor of crisp directions (“produce a witty line . . . ”). So: You’re in your late 20s, new to the big city (New York, of course), starting to write screenplays, with a boring day job as an administrative assistant. You’re into sports (not overemphasized) and you like kids. Inevitably, you gravitate to the Internet and find a potential snowflake, even though she lives with her parents on “please god noooo, Long Island.” Sonja is 30, working on a master’s thesis in child education, and suffers from the enervating Epstein-Barr syndrome. But never mind all that: The first kiss leaves you in no doubt that you’ve found your snowflake. It’s simply icing on the cake that Sonja shows you how to master Access (you’d lied at your interview) and can even replace your toilet tank ball. Much of this is incorporated into your screenplay, and dissected by you and your shrink. Meeting the folks? That’s always good for a laugh. Where Israel scores is in the ingenious use of his material. A panel discussion on the novel-into-movie The Hours is fodder for more laughs at the narrator’s expense, but later becomes the surprising trigger for a mutual declaration of love. Eventually, there will be a Big Problem and a parting, but all is not lost: You get a job offer to write sitcoms in LA. And you and Sonja? Could that be a twist ending up the screenwriter’s sleeve?
Israel is a budding comic talent, a guide so likable we overlook the familiarity of the terrain. Think of this as a tasty appetizer, just the thing for that long flight.Pub Date: Jan. 25, 2005
ISBN: 0-345-47660-3
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2004
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by Hanya Yanagihara ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 10, 2015
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.
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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
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by Harper Lee ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 11, 1960
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
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