A thoughtful, realistic look at two very different times and places and the mind of a young man balanced between them.
An Argentinian-American’s traumatic childhood intrudes on his adulthood in Hojraj’s debut novel.
In 1979, 10-year-old Daniel Hoffman travels from the U.S. to visit family in Buenos Aires. Daniel’s father died in Argentina’s Dirty War three years earlier, leaving behind the close, colorful clan Daniel grows to know better during his summer holiday. Daniel pinballs among his abuela; her four sisters; his lovable, rascally uncle; his aunt, who’s “the wisest woman Danny had ever met and would ever know”; and her seamy husband. The war that killed Daniel’s father has entered a new phase, filled with stories of “ ‘the disappeared,’ whose numbers were growing, as were the stories of men in Ford Falcons breaking down doors in the middle of the night to drag away more and more young people.” Despite this atmosphere, Daniel has plenty of good times—exploring the city, hanging out with his uncle, feasting on matambres, provoletas, and empanadas—but not all his memories are pleasant. Twenty years later, Daniel still suffers from the trauma he experienced that summer. As a young internist at New York hospital, he’s subject to migraines and paranoia, living in a “sparsely furnished room,” and spending all of his free time counseling sex-hungry octogenarians, plastic surgery victims, and sexually transmitted diseases cases. He gradually becomes involved with the intriguing Dr. Priya Patel, whose “Guajarati accent played music with each word.” But his troubled dreams and unsettling memories put their happiness in jeopardy. “At each stage in my life,” Daniel explains to her, “I keep feeling like there’s something missing and it’s just around the corner. It’s like turning on the radio only to catch the last few seconds of your favorite song.” Hojraj writes knowingly about Buenos Aires, the feel of the streets, the taste of the food, and the way its people talk, work, and play. He is equally persuasive in his descriptions of life as a harried internist. Readers curious about either subject are encouraged to pick up a copy of this novel, but be sure to keep two bookmarks on hand for the endnotes translating Argentinian phrases and customs (though said notes might more helpfully have been converted to footnote form, making flipping unnecessary).
A thoughtful, realistic look at two very different times and places and the mind of a young man balanced between them.Pub Date: Aug. 14, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-4575-3978-7
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Dog Ear
Review Posted Online: March 8, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2016
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
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
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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