Four angry young 1970s women form a feminist publishing house in London only to find their own ambition no less virulent than men’s—in Weldon’s (Wicked Women, 1997, etc.) wry and witty examination of where feminism went wrong and, occasionally, right. The sexual revolution has just begun, but Stephanie is already fed up with her marriage to antiques dealer Hamish, a suburban heartthrob who lusts after every woman but her. Hosting a consciousness-raising meeting one summer evening, Stephanie thrills to the suggestion made by Layla, an heiress, that the women start their own publishing house and call it Medusa. She even joins in as Layla, Alice (an academic and I Ching addict), and Zoe (overeducated housewife/mom) defiantly remove their clothes and dance naked and unashamed before the living room windows. But when Stephanie wanders upstairs to find Daffy, another “sister,” getting it on with Hamish, she abandons the house without even her clothes, leaving husband, home and children in guileless Daffy’s hands. Stephanie’s marriage may be dead, but Medusa has been born; for the next two-and-a-half decades, Stephanie, Layla, and Alice struggle to keep their woman-centered business solvent without crossing the border into “unacceptable” commercial success. Along the way, they suffer the indignities of loneliness—as the courts limit Stephanie’s access to her children, Layla continues an affair with a powerful but married man, and Alice moves ever closer to the maniacal extremes of goddess-worship. But at least they have each other. Zoe, who opted for a traditional family life, labors in isolation on her book (Lost Women) and then commits suicide when her husband tells her (falsely) that Medusa has turned the manuscript down. Eventually, Medusa turns the book into a massive success—but with success will come the seeds of disintegration. Weldon’s clever comparisons of yesterday’s mores to today’s spice up this bubbling feminist brew, offering a study of the costs and consequences of the idealistic life that is sharp, funny, and all too true.
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1998
ISBN: 0-87113-720-8
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Atlantic Monthly
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1998
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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