Readers who enjoyed Presidential Intentions won’t be disappointed by this action-packed sequel.
A political thriller that explores the grim consequences of a cataclysmic terrorist attack on Washington, D.C.
In his sequel to 2014’s Presidential Intentions, Wood (101 Things I Want to Say…The Collection, 2013, etc.) brings back Samantha Harrison, a one-time Republican candidate for president. Now Hillary Clinton occupies the Oval Office, and Harrison has lost her bid for a U.S. Senate seat in Virginia. With her once-bright political future now murky, Harrison considers exiting public life for private pursuits. However, Gov. Eric Cantor of Virginia presents her with a new opportunity: veteran congressman Frank Wolfe plans to retire, and he wants Cantor to install Harrison as his replacement. She quickly accepts, which instantly reintroduces her into the Washington political fray. Meanwhile, in a continuation of a plotline from the previous book, an Iranian plan unfolds that aims to bring the U.S. government to its knees. Harrison soon finds herself challenged like never before, both as a leader of a hobbled country and as a mother grieving the death of her son. The depiction of the hateful, calculating lead terrorist, Kazim Maalouff, is chilling; at one point, for example, he explains the inner logic of terrorism with a dark calculus: “No doubt you will never understand our cause. Violence is something America abhors unless they’re the ones dispensing it.” It’s not necessary to read the first book to appreciate the action of its sequel, but it will certainly help to gain a fuller understanding of the protagonist. The first installment rigorously develops the character of Samantha, revealing her political inclinations and worldview, while the sequel forces her to test the efficacy of those views in a crisis. This sequel is just as politically sharp, but it packs a more powerful dramatic punch. In the first book, for example, the terrorism took a back seat to domestic political intrigue, but this installment revolves around terrorist activity and even crescendos with it. Overall, this is a gripping read for political junkies of all partisan inclinations given its topical nature and its use of real-life political figures and issues.
Readers who enjoyed Presidential Intentions won’t be disappointed by this action-packed sequel.Pub Date: June 1, 2015
ISBN: 978-1508806318
Page Count: 207
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: May 5, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.
A violent surfacing of adolescence (which has little in common with Tarkington's earlier, broadly comic, Seventeen) has a compulsive impact.
"Nobody big except me" is the dream world of Holden Caulfield and his first person story is down to the basic, drab English of the pre-collegiate. For Holden is now being bounced from fancy prep, and, after a vicious evening with hall- and roommates, heads for New York to try to keep his latest failure from his parents. He tries to have a wild evening (all he does is pay the check), is terrorized by the hotel elevator man and his on-call whore, has a date with a girl he likes—and hates, sees his 10 year old sister, Phoebe. He also visits a sympathetic English teacher after trying on a drunken session, and when he keeps his date with Phoebe, who turns up with her suitcase to join him on his flight, he heads home to a hospital siege. This is tender and true, and impossible, in its picture of the old hells of young boys, the lonesomeness and tentative attempts to be mature and secure, the awful block between youth and being grown-up, the fright and sickness that humans and their behavior cause the challenging, the dramatization of the big bang. It is a sorry little worm's view of the off-beat of adult pressure, of contemporary strictures and conformity, of sentiment….
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.Pub Date: June 15, 1951
ISBN: 0316769177
Page Count: -
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1951
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
APPRECIATIONS
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
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