A curious story whose protagonist strongly resembles the antiheroes of comics writer Mark Millar (Kick-Ass, 2008, etc.).
A Midwestern teenager learns that having a superpower isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.
It’s a testament to this novel’s unusual pull that it keeps the reader engaged despite its deeply disturbing imagery and much bloodshed. This is a fairly drastic reworking of Venturini’s 2010 indie novel The Samaritan, complete with a new ending. In the first act, we meet an awkward adolescent named Dale Sampson and his athletic best friend, Mack Tucker. They’re on the verge of graduating from the hell that is high school when Dale’s attraction to classmate Regina Carpenter earns him the wrath of her sadistic boyfriend, Clint, who ultimately slays her, three others and himself. While recovering from his wounds, Dale learns that he can regenerate his own limbs and organs. In a slow second act, we see Dale suffering from survivor’s guilt, figuring out the limits of his new abilities and indulging his savior syndrome by trying to help Regina’s twin sister, Raeanna, escape from an abusive marriage. In the third act, Mack brings Dale with him to California, where he's become a B-list reality show star. Dale pitches his so-called superpower to the networks as a reality show called “The Samaritan,” in which Dale donates his disposable organs to needy recipients. As he gives freely of kidneys, skin, bone marrow and even eyes, the world becomes increasingly fascinated with his abilities, even as Dale becomes increasingly more cynical. “Whatever is inside of me only seems to wake up when I get cut or beat on,” he tells a sympathetic doctor. “If that’s hope, hope can go fuck itself.” Make no bones about it, this is a grotesque tale punctuated by its brutal yet casual violence. However, it also offers a realistic portrayal of male friendships, a black comedy about the nature of the human body and, remarkably enough, a cathartic sort of redemption.
A curious story whose protagonist strongly resembles the antiheroes of comics writer Mark Millar (Kick-Ass, 2008, etc.).Pub Date: Nov. 4, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-250-05221-6
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Picador
Review Posted Online: Aug. 13, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2014
BOOK REVIEW
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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