Fackler (Barbed Wire, 1986), in the third of a series about a ruthless outlaw, weaves a captivating tale of Western life in the late 19th century. The story opens with Seth Strummar taking responsibility for his five-year-old son. New family obligations prove difficult to bear after a lifetime of theft and murder, and Seth struggles to adjust. His current riding partner, Joaquin, emerges as instrumental in persuading Seth to turn his back on his past in order to care for his son. Key to Seth's reform is his ruthless and relentless abuse of women, developed in flashbacks to his early outlaw career with his mentor and partner in crime, Ben Allister. Out of loyalty to and love for Ben, Seth seduced women while allowing Ben to watch and then beat the women. The graphic and violent sex scenes are, for the most part, peripheral to—and occasionally excessive for—the development of the characters, though they do explain Seth's failure at relationships. Fackler ingeniously maps a tale of intense love and friendship between Seth and Ben, intimating that, at least for Ben, the love would have grown into more if not for the repressive social attitudes towards homosexuality characteristic of the period. Nearly bringing Seth down with him, Ben eventually buries himself in alcohol and despair, his ghost haunting Seth throughout the story. Although constantly tempted to resume old habits, Seth finds himself caught up in the excitement and fascination of his son. Again, Fackler presents a side of the macho cowboy not often seen in westerns by developing an intimate relationship between the father and young child. Finally, after intense internal battle, Seth chooses to create a stable home for his son, to be shared by his lover, partner, and close friends. Innovative attention to character development places this book on the cutting edge of new westerns.
Pub Date: May 1, 1994
ISBN: 0-87131-734-6
Page Count: 192
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 1994
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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