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THE CURSE OF TREASURE ISLAND

Full canvas as the blood flies.

Fourth or fifth “Return to Treasure Island” novel striving to re-create Stevenson’s breezy blood-and-thunder in a new course on the old chart—and tempting the reader with leftover loot still awaiting its return to civilization.

Stevenson’s mesmerizing storytelling voice remains unique, but pseudonymous Bryan (“a very prominent British broadcast journalist”) captures much of the original narrative’s fast action and flying musket balls. With Jim Hawkins now 21, Bryan sensibly upgrades the story from boys’ adventure to young adult, adding a large dollop of sexually subliminal love-interest along with a fresh sense of “drink and the devil” among pirates. Also back: the charming rascality of Long John Silver, last seen making off with a bag of coins and his parrot, Cap’n Flint. Jim is now an innkeeper who has invested his earlier share of the treasure in outfitting his late father’s Admiral Benbow Inn and attracting a higher clientele than rapscallions like Blind Pew, Bill Bones, and Black Dog, who once hid out there roaring oaths and singing “Fifteen men on a dead man’s chest.” The first body drops early. Grace Richardson, on the run with her unruly 12-year-old son Louis, approaches Jim to help her find Joseph Tait, the roughest of three pirates left marooned on Treasure Island as the Hispaniola sailed off. On the road, Grace and Jim are attacked by the Duke of Berwick, and Jim accidentally kills him. Then bad guys chasing Grace and Louis fire upon, and attempt to blow up, the Admiral Benbow. Accused of murder by Sir Thomas Maltby, Jim takes Grace and Louis to his uncle Ambrose for shelter. Soon Jim, Captain Reid, and the Hispaniola are off again for the island to find Tait. Is terrible Tait Louis’s father? Is Louis a love child? How old is Grace—too old for Jim? We are kept in the dark until tale’s end.

Full canvas as the blood flies.

Pub Date: May 13, 2002

ISBN: 0-670-03089-9

Page Count: 304

Publisher: Viking

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2002

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A LITTLE LIFE

The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.

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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

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THE THINGS WE DO FOR LOVE

Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.

Life lessons.

Angie Malone, the youngest of a big, warm Italian-American family, returns to her Pacific Northwest hometown to wrestle with various midlife disappointments: her divorce, Papa’s death, a downturn in business at the family restaurant, and, above all, her childlessness. After several miscarriages, she, a successful ad exec, and husband Conlan, a reporter, befriended a pregnant young girl and planned to adopt her baby—and then the birth mother changed her mind. Angie and Conlan drifted apart and soon found they just didn’t love each other anymore. Metaphorically speaking, “her need for a child had been a high tide, an overwhelming force that drowned them. A year ago, she could have kicked to the surface but not now.” Sadder but wiser, Angie goes to work in the struggling family restaurant, bickering with Mama over updating the menu and replacing the ancient waitress. Soon, Angie befriends another young girl, Lauren Ribido, who’s eager to learn and desperately needs a job. Lauren’s family lives on the wrong side of the tracks, and her mother is a promiscuous alcoholic, but Angie knows nothing of this sad story and welcomes Lauren into the DeSaria family circle. The girl listens in, wide-eyed, as the sisters argue and make wisecracks and—gee-whiz—are actually nice to each other. Nothing at all like her relationship with her sluttish mother, who throws Lauren out when boyfriend David, en route to Stanford, gets her pregnant. Will Lauren, who’s just been accepted to USC, let Angie adopt her baby? Well, a bit of a twist at the end keeps things from becoming too predictable.

Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.

Pub Date: July 1, 2004

ISBN: 0-345-46750-7

Page Count: 400

Publisher: Ballantine

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2004

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