A beautiful family tale with lifelike characters that could have benefited from a stronger structure.
A pregnant Iraqi-American war veteran hides out on the property of a young seminarian in this novel.
Theodore Dash has returned to his mother’s northern Michigan hometown after the death of his grandfather. He learns that his relative has left him property while his brother, Nate, who is in the military in Iraq, is bequeathed $10,000. Theodore has been in a seminary and is conflicted about whether to return to it. The town of Empire is a magical place to him, a lush paradise on the Lake Michigan shore, full of happy childhood memories and surrounded by blooming apple orchards. There is also Brigid Birdsey, a young bar owner, whom Theodore is growing closer to. Throughout the narrative, poems written by a woman named Zaima al-Aziz appear, and eventually Zaima herself arrives in Empire. She is a young veteran just back from the Iraq war, and she is in the early stages of pregnancy. She finds refuge in a church but soon makes her way to the Dash homestead. Hiding out in the barn, she keeps a low profile, unwilling to return to her parents’ home in Dearborn, and not wanting to make contact with the Dash family, at least not yet. Theodore’s mother, Isabelle, a high-powered Chicago lawyer, was “never cut out to swim” in this piddling “little fish bowl.” She encourages Theodore to sell the property and use the money to help his brother get settled once he returns from Iraq. When Zaima finally becomes known to Theodore, a story begins to emerge that calls into question family relationships and everyone’s long-term plans. Packard (Paint the Bird, 2013, etc.) paints a gorgeous picture of northern Michigan and is clearly well-versed in the ins and outs of life around the Great Lakes, from small towns to Chicago’s Lake Shore Drive. The emotions that these places evoke in the characters are well-described, as is the desire to be near people but not too close. But the novel meanders in the middle, and the absence of a strong story arc becomes obvious. Details about characters are revealed slowly over time, making it a long wait for the inevitable confrontation that is bound to occur near the end of the book.
A beautiful family tale with lifelike characters that could have benefited from a stronger structure.Pub Date: Oct. 20, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-57962-528-3
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Permanent Press
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
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
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