Cataclysmic horror novel, sixth and final in a series begun with The Keep (1981). This is something of an omnibus, bringing together characters from the earlier novels in a last fight against the evil entity first met in The Keep, wherein Nazis occupying a Rumanian castle released the then vampire, timeless entity Rasalom. Although Rasalom seemed driven off, he reappeared as the motherless clone in Reborn (1990), which fathered the genius baby in Reprisal (1991). Now Rasalom, gestating in a cave in the earth beneath Central Park's Sheep Meadow, begins his final assault, feeding on humankind's fears and negativity for the force needed to occupy the planet. Rasalom faces Glaeken, his ancient enemy for good, who lives with his disease-ravaged wife Madga (girl heroine of The Keep) over Central Park West, but both opponents are pawns for forces of Good and Evil who battle on a scale that takes no account of human existence. The present novel has enough whiplash plot and flying horror to suffice for its own needs, although it often reads like Ghostbusters gone berserk. Sunrise comes late, sunset early as Rasalom shrinks earth's daylight. He opens a bottomless 200-year pit in the Sheep Meadow that goes not to China but to another dimension. Out of it fly horrible acid-bag bugs and chomping piranha bats, as night falls, and at last night falls permanently. Many heroes and heroines from earlier novels gather with Glaeken to fight Rasalom with dat-tay-vao, a miraculous Vietnamese necklace whose talent also inhabits the once-autistic child Jeffy. While giant black flying leviathans eat aircraft, more holes appear around the earth, one forming a whirlpool off Hawaii that causes the island to disappear under a reawakened volcano chain. Will Glaeken and the sword of day-tay-vao save mankind—and this novel get published? Gripping and gruesome super-comic-book stuff—but let's hope this is it.
Pub Date: Oct. 15, 1992
ISBN: 0-913165-71-9
Page Count: 325
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1992
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
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
bookshelf
