A heartbreaking and exquisite story about emotional violence.
A novel traces a forlorn woman’s romantic and artistic journey.
Angela Dunnewald barely keeps it together as a lonely housewife in a wealthy New England suburb. Her daily interactions are typically limited to lunch with Lydia, the larger-than-life socialite who has taken an inexplicable liking to Angela, and brief exchanges with Ina, her stern housekeeper. Angela’s husband, Ross, is often absent and reliably self-absorbed and spiteful when he is home: “Once, when he’d broken a teacup...he’d blamed the table, saying it was too small.” Everything changes when a mysterious stranger starts lurking outside the house. Sensing a kindred spirit, Angela eventually invites him in. Daniel is an itinerant carpenter from a broken home: quiet, gentle, good, and everything Ross is not. Daniel starts visiting regularly, and Angela lives vicariously through imagining his life apart from her. She falls in love with him, enjoying “the sense he gives her that she’s not spinning alone through the dark.” The affair empowers her to think beyond the colorless existence she’s been leading. She enrolls in a local art class and renovates the garden shed, turning it into a studio where she finally feels some sense of purpose. She retreats from Ross and Lydia, but upon discovering that Daniel may be hiding more than just their affair, that relationship, too, threatens to unravel. The novel boasts some stunning turns of phrase bridging Angela’s thoughts and reality. In describing Daniel: “He’s some lean-flanked, fine-boned thing. A deer. Or a wolf. Her mind is caught up in entanglements, people and animals coupling in strange ways, swans, she sees swans, and satyrs.” No moment feels wasted under Legters’ (Connected Underneath, 2016) keen, observant eye. When Angela and Ross attend yet another expensive, stuffy dinner, an oversized menu is “the size of an airplane wing,” and fellow diners wear blank faces “like those huge sunflowers.” All the while, Angela’s frustration that she hasn’t made the most of her life and her path toward self-acceptance ring true in this painfully beautiful tale. Fans of Richard Yates’ Revolutionary Road (1961) rejoice.
A heartbreaking and exquisite story about emotional violence.Pub Date: May 27, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-59021-647-7
Page Count: -
Publisher: Lethe Press
Review Posted Online: April 3, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2017
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
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.
Sisters work together to solve a child-abandonment case.
Ellie and Julia Cates have never been close. Julia is shy and brainy; Ellie gets by on charm and looks. Their differences must be tossed aside when a traumatized young girl wanders in from the forest into their hometown in Washington. The sisters’ professional skills are put to the test. Julia is a world-renowned child psychologist who has lost her edge. She is reeling from a case that went publicly sour. Though she was cleared of all wrongdoing, Julia’s name was tarnished, forcing her to shutter her Beverly Hills practice. Ellie Barton is the local police chief in Rain Valley, who’s never faced a tougher case. This is her chance to prove she is more than just a fading homecoming queen, but a scarcity of clues and a reluctant victim make locating the girl’s parents nearly impossible. Ellie places an SOS call to her sister; she needs an expert to rehabilitate this wild-child who has been living outside of civilization for years. Confronted with her professional demons, Julia once again has the opportunity to display her talents and salvage her reputation. Hannah (The Things We Do for Love, 2004, etc.) is at her best when writing from the girl’s perspective. The feral wolf-child keeps the reader interested long after the other, transparent characters have grown tiresome. Hannah’s torturously over-written romance passages are stale, but there are surprises in store as the sisters set about unearthing Alice’s past and creating a home for her.
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.Pub Date: March 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-345-46752-3
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2005
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