Sort of lags after the first few hundred amputations.
Two Mongol lads become leaders of their universe in a relentlessly serious saga about Genghis Khan.
If there’s anyone left in the civilized world who has any doubt that central Asia is one of those places best left to the central Asians, let him spend several days of his effete Western life curled up with this hymn to 13th-century life on the steppe. Dripping with blood (much of it drunk, some mingled, most soaking the ground under the pounding hooves of Mongol chargers), thick with research (everyone wears a del rather than a cloak and drinks airag rather than fermented mare’s milk), and chockablock with widescreen imagery (grass, grass, grass), this is the tale of Bo’urchu, the most loyal friend an ambitious landless nomad could ask for, and Temujin, the nomad in need of such a loyal friend. Charismatic Temujin, eventually to be Genghis Khan, burns to redress the humiliation of his family; Bo’urchu pretty much wants to lead a nice life, zooming around the steppe on the best horse in the world. Having the less pressing agenda, Bo’urchu spends the rest of his days following Temujin in and around Mongolia, administering ritual humiliation, beheading, enjoying a bender now and then, raping, uniting tribes, and ultimately putting together a nation capable of going to war against the big dogs, China and the West. Temujin gets all the girls, and there are plenty. He especially gets the ones that his blood brother Bo’urchu fancies. Temujin fathers many sons, Bo’urchu doesn’t. There are rewards for loyal chums, though. There’s plenty of booty—the old fashioned kind—and lots of hunting. And, whenever there’s occasion to celebrate, everybody settles in and tears apart a nice sheep to eat, raw if necessary. Gourmands will enjoy the recipe for barbecued whole marmot, which suggests inserting a hot rock into the wee rodent. Oh, and by the way, the women love the life as much as the men. Honest.
Sort of lags after the first few hundred amputations.Pub Date: April 8, 2003
ISBN: 0-312-30965-1
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Dunne/St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2003
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
Too beholden to sentimentality and cliché, this novel fails to establish a uniquely realized perspective.
Hunter’s debut novel tracks the experiences of her family members during the Holocaust.
Sol and Nechuma Kurc, wealthy, cultured Jews in Radom, Poland, are successful shop owners; they and their grown children live a comfortable lifestyle. But that lifestyle is no protection against the onslaught of the Holocaust, which eventually scatters the members of the Kurc family among several continents. Genek, the oldest son, is exiled with his wife to a Siberian gulag. Halina, youngest of all the children, works to protect her family alongside her resistance-fighter husband. Addy, middle child, a composer and engineer before the war breaks out, leaves Europe on one of the last passenger ships, ending up thousands of miles away. Then, too, there are Mila and Felicia, Jakob and Bella, each with their own share of struggles—pain endured, horrors witnessed. Hunter conducted extensive research after learning that her grandfather (Addy in the book) survived the Holocaust. The research shows: her novel is thorough and precise in its details. It’s less precise in its language, however, which frequently relies on cliché. “You’ll get only one shot at this,” Halina thinks, enacting a plan to save her husband. “Don’t botch it.” Later, Genek, confronting a routine bit of paperwork, must decide whether or not to hide his Jewishness. “That form is a deal breaker,” he tells himself. “It’s life and death.” And: “They are low, it seems, on good fortune. And something tells him they’ll need it.” Worse than these stale phrases, though, are the moments when Hunter’s writing is entirely inadequate for the subject matter at hand. Genek, describing the gulag, calls the nearest town “a total shitscape.” This is a low point for Hunter’s writing; elsewhere in the novel, it’s stronger. Still, the characters remain flat and unknowable, while the novel itself is predictable. At this point, more than half a century’s worth of fiction and film has been inspired by the Holocaust—a weighty and imposing tradition. Hunter, it seems, hasn’t been able to break free from her dependence on it.
Too beholden to sentimentality and cliché, this novel fails to establish a uniquely realized perspective.Pub Date: Feb. 14, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-399-56308-9
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Nov. 21, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2016
BOOK TO SCREEN
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