A raunchy and funny novel that would have benefited from stronger connections between the characters’ stories.
In this sexually frank sequel to Groove (2005), Holliday (the alter-ego nom de plume of novelist Bernice L. McFadden) details the misadventures of friends Geneva, Crystal, Chevy and Noah.
Geneva and Crystal have taken a vow of celibacy after too many bad relationships. Slippery opportunist Chevy, meanwhile, is broke and unemployed, and dependent on the grudging generosity of Noah, who lent her his New York digs when he moved to London to be with his British lover Zahn. Their lives soon take a turn for the steamy, starting with good girl Crystal, when Neville, a childhood pal visiting from Antigua, comes to stay with her. She is pleased to discover that the once awkward boy has grown into a stunning man with dreadlocks. She happily falls into Neville’s muscular arms, but is livid when she finds out not only that her island hunk works as a gigolo, but that her mother and Noah conspired to have him visit her. Single mom Geneva has a reversal of fortune when Deeka, the manager of her teenaged son Eric’s band, starts to pursue her romantically. But as taken as she is with Deeka, Geneva, a plus-sized waitress, finds it hard to believe that he would actually be interested, and she worries about how their relationship will affect Eric. When Eric does discover Deeka and his mother together, he is not happy, forcing Geneva to make a tough choice. Noah, for his part, finds his relationship with Zahn tested when an attractive gay couple moves into their neighborhood and suggests a partner swap. And finally there is Chevy, who lands a coveted gig as assistant to a high-maintenance radio personality, Anja. When Chevy accompanies her boss to the Caribbean, she receives a scandalous—and frankly implausible—proposition.
A raunchy and funny novel that would have benefited from stronger connections between the characters’ stories.Pub Date: April 18, 2006
ISBN: 0-7679-2115-1
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Broadway
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2006
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
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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