Though the ending falters, this novel sings.
In this literary novel, a black Southern blues guitarist in the 1940s runs north after a murder but wonders how long he can escape the law.
The tall woman dancing “as if she were some Saturday-night sin, black magic” at Sunny’s Blues Shack has a powerful hold on guitar player Arfel Booker. He’s got to have her, as he tells his guitar, Blue Fire. But on his second visit to the blueswoman’s cabin in the woods, Arfel wakes from a night of blackout drinking to discover her gone—and in bed is the dead body of a white man, his throat slashed with Arfel’s knife. The young man’s only hope is to flee northward, hopping trains and putting some distance between him and the law. In an unnamed northern city, Arfel finds a place to live, a blues bar where he can play, and some new friends, such as bluesmen Lemontree Johnson and Knock-Kneed Kirkland. Even though this new life is working well, Arfel feels shamed by his past. He tells his guitar, “What me and Tom…Tom Mickens used to do down by the river with those girls. Was-wasn’t right, Blue Fire.” When a white bounty hunter comes to town looking for Arfel, his capture feels inevitable. His friends rally to help him, but can Arfel evade his sins forever? Gray (Black Bloods, 2015, etc.) writes in an often songlike cadence; dialogue and striking images powerfully evoke the lives of his characters. Here’s Gin-Water Pete, Arfel’s fellow blues player, on running north: “You know how to travel, you an’ Blue Fire, how—on the back roads, Arfel. Keep there. Always on the back roads. Don’t veer. Hardly wander.” The compression and freshness here resemble poetry. The book’s ending, however, may unsettle, especially when readers discover more about Arfel. A last-minute ironic twist seems very unlikely.
Though the ending falters, this novel sings.Pub Date: Oct. 19, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-4917-5731-4
Page Count: 292
Publisher: iUniverse
Review Posted Online: July 15, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles...
Sisters in and out of love.
Meghann Dontess is a high-powered matrimonial lawyer in Seattle who prefers sex with strangers to emotional intimacy: a strategy bound to backfire sooner or later, warns her tough-talking shrink. It’s advice Meghann decides to ignore, along with the memories of her difficult childhood, neglectful mother, and younger sister. Though she managed to reunite Claire with Sam Cavenaugh (her father but not Meghann’s) when her mother abandoned both girls long ago, Meghann still feels guilty that her sister’s life doesn’t measure up, at least on her terms. Never married, Claire ekes out a living running a country campground with her dad and is raising her six-year-old daughter on her own. When she falls in love for the first time with an up-and-coming country musician, Meghann is appalled: Bobby Austin is a three-time loser at marriage—how on earth can Claire be so blind? Bobby’s blunt explanation doesn’t exactly satisfy the concerned big sister, who busies herself planning Claire’s dream wedding anyway. And, to relieve the stress, she beds various guys she picks up in bars, including Dr. Joe Wyatt, a neurosurgeon turned homeless drifter after the demise of his beloved wife Diane (whom he euthanized). When Claire’s awful headache turns out to be a kind of brain tumor known among neurologists as a “terminator,” Joe rallies. Turns out that Claire had befriended his wife on her deathbed, and now in turn he must try to save her. Is it too late? Will Meghann find true love at last?
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles (Distant Shores, 2002, etc.). Kudos for skipping the snifflefest this time around.Pub Date: May 1, 2003
ISBN: 0-345-45073-6
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2003
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
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