A middle-aged man with secrets renovates a haunted house in this historical/mystical Western drama from Willerton (The Lady in White, 2012).
Combining the seemingly disparate themes of home repair and shamanic ghost stories, Willerton splits his novel between the tragic tale of the 19th century Mulvaney family and the modern-day redemption story of house restorer Tucker Whitby. Initially dismayed by the enormous size of the house, Tucker decides to buy the storied property from freshly divorced real estate agent Lynn Anderson after he realizes that the house is, in fact, alive. Built in 1869 by corrupt lawyer Cyrus Mulvaney, who later hanged himself from the rafters, the house was given sentience by an unnamed shaman. The mystery of the shaman’s identity is slowly revealed as Tucker and his crew of teenage construction workers restore it. When a pregnant teenager seeks asylum from her unhappy family, Tucker attempts to conquer his past emotional wounds so he can help her. The narrative engages because it embraces its mystical premise. When asked what it’s like to restore a haunted house, Tucker says without irony, “Building with a spirit-partner is something new, but it’s added a flavor to building that I’ve never had.” Like the Bob Villa of haunted houses, Tucker’s love for the project becomes a conduit for him to address the horrors of his own past. Oddly, the house acts as an occasional lovelorn narrator, adding insight into the mystical happenings. Each of the supporting characters wrestles with believable personal struggles, which illuminates their interactions with others. The descriptions of the restoration work, however, are perhaps too meticulously detailed, although restoration aficionados will undoubtedly relish the passages that describe how each section of the house is carefully brought back to life. Tucker’s emotional demons and the impromptu family he creates are fleshy enough to imbue the sanding, painting and rusty stud removal with genuine feeling.
A warm, sometimes overly described tale of a simultaneous restoration of a home and homeowner.
Pub Date: April 14, 2014
ISBN: 978-0615974026
Page Count: 292
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: July 2, 2014
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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