Bittersweet coming-of-age tale with flashes of wit and an especially sympathetic heroine.
A young woman gets the chance to confront the now world-famous rock star who broke her heart 13 years ago, and who went on to write a series of deeply personal songs about her.
Back in Croton Falls, Vt., Jake Sharpe was a teen dream: beautiful, talented, with an aching vulnerability and an unhappy home life. After adoring him for much of high school, Kate Hollis finally gets her man, and the two are inseparable until Jake takes off for L.A. shortly before graduation—without saying goodbye. A devastated Kate tries to get over her loss, but finds it exceedingly difficult as Jake’s music career takes off, with his songs about their young love becoming modern classics. So when her childhood best friend Laura calls to alert her that Jake has come home to do a TV special, Kate puts her grown-up life in Charleston on hold and heads to Croton Falls, in an effort to make Jake “regret his entire existence.” At her parent’s house, Kate revisits all the memories, good and bad, that led her to this moment, including her dad’s mental breakdown and her mom’s subsequent affair, which brought Kate and Jake even closer. And, yep, he wrote about that, too. She then schemes her way onto Jake’s shoot, and catches his eye, setting the stage for the apology—and sexy reunion—that Kate has long been waiting for. Turns out that Jake has never gotten over her either, and the rekindling of their romance feels like fate, with Jake trying to make up for lost time. He whisks his muse to his New York penthouse, and the two share some blissful moments until the mayhem of his celebrity existence intrudes, causing Kate to question whether Jake has changed too much—or too little. This third effort from McLaughlin and Kraus (Citizen Girl, 2004, etc.) is spot-on in its depiction of Kate and Laura’s early girlish hysteria, and quickly overcomes a certain cleverness for its own sake to tell a moving story of teenage passion.
Bittersweet coming-of-age tale with flashes of wit and an especially sympathetic heroine.Pub Date: June 5, 2007
ISBN: 978-1-4165-4013-7
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2007
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
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The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with...
Talk-show queen takes tumble as millions jeer.
Nora Bridges is a wildly popular radio spokesperson for family-first virtues, but her loyal listeners don't know that she walked out on her husband and teenaged daughters years ago and didn't look back. Now that a former lover has sold racy pix of naked Nora and horny himself to a national tabloid, her estranged daughter Ruby, an unsuccessful stand-up comic in Los Angeles, has been approached to pen a tell-all. Greedy for the fat fee she's been promised, Ruby agrees and heads for the San Juan Islands, eager to get reacquainted with the mom she plans to betray. Once in the family homestead, nasty Ruby alternately sulks and glares at her mother, who is temporarily wheelchair-bound as a result of a post-scandal car crash. Uncaring, Ruby begins writing her side of the story when she's not strolling on the beach with former sweetheart Dean Sloan, the son of wealthy socialites who basically ignored him and his gay brother Eric. Eric, now dying of cancer and also in a wheelchair, has returned to the island. This dismal threesome catch up on old times, recalling their childhood idylls on the island. After Ruby's perfect big sister Caroline shows up, there's another round of heartfelt talk. Nora gradually reveals the truth about her unloving husband and her late father's alcoholism, which led her to seek the approval of others at the cost of her own peace of mind. And so on. Ruby is aghast to discover that she doesn't know everything after all, but Dean offers her subdued comfort. Happy endings await almost everyone—except for readers of this nobly preachy snifflefest.
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with syrupy platitudes about life and love.Pub Date: March 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-609-60737-5
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2001
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