A light bit of comfort reading for those looking for a fond, if sometimes-irreverent, look back at a bygone era.
Duclon’s debut novel follows the all-American Duncan family over two very memorable weeks in 1961.
It’s Christmastime in Rockford, Illinois, and 11-year-old David Duncan doesn’t have too much on his personal wish list: he wants a fancy new go-kart and the chance to go on a date with his crush, Susie Sweeney. There are a couple of complications, though: he can’t help but blurt out his feelings around Susie, and, more pressingly, she’s more into his best friend, Veto Santello. Meanwhile, his parents—the strict yet gregarious Duke and the kindhearted Phyllis—aren’t onboard with the go-kart idea. Add in a mischievous little sister and a principal with a predilection for corporal punishment, and there’s a lot for David to navigate. By his side is the family dog, Rags, who, when he’s not “jumpin’ and humpin’ ” someone’s leg, is loyal to a fault. The narrative follows David from misadventure to misadventure, whether they involve sophomoric pranks at school, an ill-advised sled trip down “Suicide Hill,” or a dramatic episode at the town’s outdoor skating rink. Duclon, a former executive producer for such TV sitcoms as Family Matters and the creator of Punky Brewster, hits familiar sitcom beats, always looking for the next joke while also showing nostalgia for the time period. He often contrasts moments of genuine Yuletide joy with the particularities of real life, such as a beautifully decorated Christmas tree repeatedly pulled down by a dog or a man in a Santa Claus suit sky-diving with a faulty parachute. Although the characters are somewhat archetypal—the wisecracking protagonist, the Everyman dad, the beautiful girl next door—Duclon puts them into inventive situations throughout, and the plot zips along, never lingering too long on one scene. This is just the first installment of a planned series, but the protagonist is still neatly and tidily developed over the course of the novel, becoming braver and more generous despite the many obstacles in his path. The fact that most of David’s obstacles are self-inflicted merely adds to the fun.
A light bit of comfort reading for those looking for a fond, if sometimes-irreverent, look back at a bygone era.Pub Date: Aug. 18, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-5488-3074-8
Page Count: 160
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Oct. 10, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2017
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
Once again, Hilderbrand displays her gift for making us care most about her least likable characters.
Hilderbrand’s latest cautionary tale exposes the toxic—and hilarious—impact of gossip on even the most sophisticated of islands.
Eddie and Grace Pancik are known for their beautiful Nantucket home and grounds, financed with the profits from Eddie’s thriving real estate company (thriving before the crash of 2008, that is). Grace raises pedigreed hens and, with the help of hunky landscape architect Benton Coe, has achieved a lush paradise of fowl-friendly foliage. The Panciks’ teenage girls, Allegra and Hope, suffer invidious comparisons of their looks and sex appeal, although they're identical twins. The Panciks’ friends the Llewellyns (Madeline, a blocked novelist, and her airline-pilot husband, Trevor) invested $50,000, the lion’s share of Madeline’s last advance, in Eddie’s latest development. But Madeline, hard-pressed to come up with catalog copy, much less a new novel, is living in increasingly straightened circumstances, at least by Nantucket standards: she can only afford $2,000 per month on the apartment she rents in desperate hope that “a room of her own” will prime the creative pump. Construction on Eddie’s spec houses has stalled, thanks to the aforementioned crash. Grace, who has been nursing a crush on Benton for some time, gives in and a torrid affair ensues, which she ill-advisedly confides to Madeline after too many glasses of Screaming Eagle. With her agent and publisher dropping dire hints about clawing back her advance and Eddie “temporarily” unable to return the 50K, what’s a writer to do but to appropriate Grace’s adultery as fictional fodder? When Eddie is seen entering her apartment (to ask why she rented from a rival realtor), rumors spread about him and Madeline, and after the rival realtor sneaks a look at Madeline’s rough draft (which New York is hotly anticipating as “the Playboy Channel meets HGTV”), the island threatens to implode with prurient snark. No one is spared, not even Hilderbrand herself, “that other Nantucket novelist,” nor this magazine, “the notoriously cranky Kirkus.”
Once again, Hilderbrand displays her gift for making us care most about her least likable characters.Pub Date: June 16, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-316-33452-5
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: May 20, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2015
PERSPECTIVES
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