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Protecting Paige

A sentimental but moving family saga.

A young girl lives with her uncle after the tragic loss of her parents and helps him to seek love again.

This novel tells the heart-rending story of Paige Noble, a young girl who is the only survivor when her parents and brother are murdered by a Chicago gang. Now orphaned, Paige’s legal guardian is her closest surviving relative, dashing photographer Maxwell Noble. Though Maxwell, a womanizing celebrity artist who was estranged from Paige’s parents, seems like an unlikely candidate to adopt the girl, he promises to take care of her and raise her as his own. Joining this duo is Gladys Barker, mother of one of the gang members who committed the crime. Gladys, desperate to make amends, stays by Paige’s side while she is in the hospital and is overjoyed when the girl remembers that Gladys’ son Darren actually saved her from the other gang members. Paige and Gladys move into Maxwell’s large Chicago apartment, and the trio forms an unlikely makeshift family. The love they develop sustains them as Paige grows older and begins to investigate some questions about her family’s past. For example, who hurt Maxwell so badly that he is unable to commit to any woman? Who took the mysterious photos of her mother that Paige finds in an old trunk? And why did her mother insist that Paige never practice Judaism, the religion of her ancestors? The answers plunge Paige and Maxwell into the past but, ultimately, propel them into a new future together. Eisenberg (Pictures of the Past, 2011) tells a compelling story here. The author chronicles Paige’s evolution, detailing her initial fears that she would somehow lose her uncle (“When he went out in the evening, she would sit on her bedroom window seat, awaiting his return like a worried mother looking for her teenage daughter after a date”). The plot, however, turns predictable; readers will most likely guess how Paige and Maxwell will affect each other’s lives and how their search for love will end before the tale’s conclusion. And some of the writing is overly flowery, with too many lines like “Everything that happened just led me down a road and a turn in the road and a detour in the road, until the road led me to…you.” But overall, the novel remains engaging, if a little syrupy, in its unfolding.

A sentimental but moving family saga.

Pub Date: Dec. 24, 2015

ISBN: 978-0-692-52875-4

Page Count: 354

Publisher: Studio House Literary

Review Posted Online: Feb. 8, 2016

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A LITTLE LIFE

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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THE THINGS WE DO FOR LOVE

Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.

Life lessons.

Angie Malone, the youngest of a big, warm Italian-American family, returns to her Pacific Northwest hometown to wrestle with various midlife disappointments: her divorce, Papa’s death, a downturn in business at the family restaurant, and, above all, her childlessness. After several miscarriages, she, a successful ad exec, and husband Conlan, a reporter, befriended a pregnant young girl and planned to adopt her baby—and then the birth mother changed her mind. Angie and Conlan drifted apart and soon found they just didn’t love each other anymore. Metaphorically speaking, “her need for a child had been a high tide, an overwhelming force that drowned them. A year ago, she could have kicked to the surface but not now.” Sadder but wiser, Angie goes to work in the struggling family restaurant, bickering with Mama over updating the menu and replacing the ancient waitress. Soon, Angie befriends another young girl, Lauren Ribido, who’s eager to learn and desperately needs a job. Lauren’s family lives on the wrong side of the tracks, and her mother is a promiscuous alcoholic, but Angie knows nothing of this sad story and welcomes Lauren into the DeSaria family circle. The girl listens in, wide-eyed, as the sisters argue and make wisecracks and—gee-whiz—are actually nice to each other. Nothing at all like her relationship with her sluttish mother, who throws Lauren out when boyfriend David, en route to Stanford, gets her pregnant. Will Lauren, who’s just been accepted to USC, let Angie adopt her baby? Well, a bit of a twist at the end keeps things from becoming too predictable.

Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.

Pub Date: July 1, 2004

ISBN: 0-345-46750-7

Page Count: 400

Publisher: Ballantine

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2004

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