A colorful, surprising novel about an over-the-hill artist grappling with times gone by.
In Kompes’ (The Middle Man, 2016, etc.) mystery, an aging drag performer tries to save his business—and his life.
Chris Marlowe is just trying to keep everything going: his looks, his sex life, his act, and his failing club, Tamburlaine, which he runs as a tribute to a dead lover. But when he starts a new relationship with a young cook named Ingram, who appears suddenly and offers to revamp Tamburlaine’s kitchen, Chris feels energized in a way that he hasn’t in years. He also reconnects with Jericho Taylor, an old friend and fellow drag performer who went on to Broadway success years ago. Jericho offers to do some performances at Tamburlaine in order to bring in much-needed crowds. Chris is just beginning to enjoy this unexpected second act—performing as real-life 1960s musical comedian Rusty Warren to a packed house—when he suffers a sudden, strokelike attack. A medical examination reveals that someone had slipped aconite into his bourbon to poison him. Chris recovers and gets to work on his big plans for the new Tamburlaine, which include an in-house theater troupe, a stellar restaurant, and a partnership with Jericho; he also continues his courtship with Ingram. Everything is falling into place when Chris is attacked outside the club by someone wielding a barrage of Molotov cocktails. It’s clear that before Chris can enjoy his success, he’ll have to figure out why someone wants him dead. Kompes writes in a confident, playful prose that perfectly captures Chris’ snarky worldview. Here, for example, he describes Chris’ reaction to seeing Ingram eat pie: “Watching young men eat made Chris feel the way he knew Whitman must have felt watching the boys swim in the Hudson.” That said, the novel takes a while to find its feet, as several unnecessary setup chapters weigh down the momentum. But once the story gets going, the reader quickly becomes invested in the mysteries surrounding Chris and his past. The novel’s ending is about as campy and melodramatic as a Tamburlaine show, and readers will likely find that to be a good thing.
A colorful, surprising novel about an over-the-hill artist grappling with times gone by.Pub Date: March 9, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-9793612-7-2
Page Count: 264
Publisher: Fabulist Flash Publishing
Review Posted Online: April 19, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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