A compact and vivid short novel, unpublished during his lifetime and previously untranslated into English, by the great Portuguese de Queir¢s (18431900) whose essential kinship with Balzac and Flaubert was not recognized until long after his death. An introductory note written in 1925 by the author's son reasons that this lean tale of marital infidelity and thwarted vengeance (it was discovered in a trunk filled with his father's manuscripts) was probably composed between 1877 and 1889 and was intended to form part of de Queir¢s's planned multivolume ``Scenes from Portuguese Life.'' It's the story of Godofredo Alves, a fat, balding businessman who is nevertheless ``something of a romantic'' and whose passions are raised to melodramatic extremes when, upon returning home unexpectedly, he finds his wife in the arms of his business partner. Godofredo plunges into a kaleidoscope of emotions, ranging from suicidal outrage to a chastened acceptance of others', and his own, frailty and foolishness. It's hard to say whether de Queir¢s considered the novella finished when he put it aside, and whether the complacent sense of peace that descends on Godofredo evinces no more than his own romantic myopia. What is certain is that de Queir¢s, one of the underappreciated masters of 19th-century realism, creates an amazing density of character and context in just a few bold strokes. An enormity of information about his protagonist's earlier life, overemotional temperament, and passive suggestibility is conveyed with imperturbable economy. Better still, as Godofredo's passions begin to cool, the very rhythm of the sentences slows and seems to ``breathe,'' as it were, more evenly, as if matching the altered pace of the man's bruised but slowly healing feelings. And in the closing half-dozen pages, we feel the weight of change and growth as they work their way through several inextricably entangled and mutually dependent lives. A slight work given depth and resonance by the indisputable presence of literary genius.
Pub Date: Nov. 29, 1996
ISBN: 0-8112-1399-0
Page Count: 112
Publisher: New Directions
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 1996
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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 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
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