Jewel Mzar and Dante love each other. But Virgil Penhaligan, the town madperson, and Donnie James Champlin, a local ne'er-do- well, are also in love with Jewel. Will one of the latter avenge himself on one of the women for the illicit love they share? Such is the suspense that threads through this uneasy, somewhat understuffed second novel by Ohio (The Finer Grain, 1988—not reviewed). In the small town of Cascade, Oregon, the sole attraction is the crumbling art deco Empire Movie Theater, which shows only film noir movies. Here, Jewel, a cold young raven-haired beauty, runs the popcorn concession; Donnie Champlin is the projectionist; and Virgil Penhaligan occupies himself as a sort of deranged Christian janitor. When the stranger Dante rides into town on her Harley, she, too, is given a job at the Empire. And so the bleak, empty Empire is the place where Dante and Jewel—who, it transpires, have met and loved before—are discovered in flagrante delicto by Virgil, who has drilled a hole in the broom closet wall the better to watch Jewel at her ablutions in the ladies' room. Later, Donnie, a frustrated painter, also takes a peek. When finally that night both men follow Jewel to her mobile home on the dark edge of town, themselves trailed by Dante, who is on the verge of fleeing from her fearful passion for her lover—well, Jewel is saved, but the Empire is set aflame by the sin-obsessed Virgil, and Dante, watching the flames, is jolted into accepting Jewel's love—the first time she's been able to love since childhood. The setting is minimal, the drama is stark, and the jittery narrative consists of alternating streams-of-consciousness, such as this one from Dante: ``Fire. Love. What am I missing then? The ability to believe, not only in my own survival but the survival of someone else—what is both me and not me. This fire. This love.'' This is hard going.
Pub Date: May 1, 1993
ISBN: 0-312-09282-2
Page Count: 160
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 1993
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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