A stylish but overwrought first novel about a newly independent woman on an ecological mission.
A chance trip to a local wetland delivers new purpose—and passion—to the life of a long-suffering woman in LaConte’s (Life Rules, 2012, etc.) expansive debut novel set in the early 1990s.
While her husband lies dying, the nearly 60-year-old Hannah Walker finds herself drawn to the Afton Marches—a wild marshland she spots from the window of her spouse’s hospital room. The attraction seems incongruous at first, even to Hannah herself. For decades, her life has been controlled by her overbearing husband, Clay. A corporate lawyer, he persuaded Hannah to give up her volunteer work, and eventually, even her driver’s license and car, so that she could focus on tending to his needs. In her roles—first as a trophy wife and later as a well-heeled member of Connecticut’s country-club set—there was certainly no room for spur-of-the-moment explorations into a swamp “on the wrong side of town.” Yet as Clay’s life ebbs, Hannah’s blossoms through regular visits to the marshland. She meets a new love interest, Leslie Willoes, through her excursions and encourages her closest friends to make their own journeys to the secluded spot. When they learn that an upscale commercial development could destroy the land they love, they agree to fight to preserve the calm, quiet beauty of Afton Marches. But can their band of wetland warriors defeat the forces of corporate greed? And what would failure mean to the spirited Hannah? LaConte writes with a naturalist’s eye. Her passages about a preening heron, a band of hungry orioles, and a fish struggling for oxygen are an intoxicating blend of scientific observation and poetry. Effortless images cascade seductively over one another, drawing in the reader. But used repeatedly, the style turns self-indulgent. One of the book’s sentences includes a numbing 74 words. And while Hannah’s journey of self-discovery is noble and moving, it is also at points tedious, undermining the power of her transformation and the author’s attempts to address important environmental and sociological issues.
A stylish but overwrought first novel about a newly independent woman on an ecological mission.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-5153-4365-3
Page Count: 678
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Nov. 6, 2015
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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