by G.T. Denny ‧ RELEASE DATE: Dec. 14, 2011
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A romantic fantasy, ambitious as any Tolkien-inspired work, earnestly and thoughtfully delivered.
Denny’s novel, his first and the opener in his Book of Broken Bindings series, begins in the Vale, a quaint and simple place, with Mr. Edward T. Cozzlebottom recalling a fragmented dream on a sunny morning during a quickly descending autumn season. Descending, it will be learned, with unnatural rapidity through dark and mysterious intent. At this auspicious moment, unconventionally wise sometimes-adventurer Cozzlebottom (Cozy to his friends) embraces his feelings for his neighbor, the sweetly hermetic rose-enthusiast Ezmerelda Wimbish, and writes her a letter confessing his affection. The eve after it is written, Mizz Wimbish is overcome by a desire to travel, and departs, and the letter is stolen by an Iron Rider traveling in shadow on a metal steed. Discovering his love vanished without explanation, Cozy enlists his friend Eddy to secure her safety and both parties venture in different directions into the uncertainty of the Outlands, the Western Hills and the Great Dorianic Forest, all encircled by the high peaks of the Bruste Mountains—Denny wisely includes a map with his text—where they find the stuff of myths and children’s stories to be more fact than fable and discover themselves figures in “a battle for light and time itself.” Denny’s drama, both jaunty and frightening, is engaging and well-paced, and his characters are wholesome archetypes: deeply lovable, easily feared or anything in between. His airy writing style and sense of whimsy complement the book’s heavy mythology. There’s nearly always allegorical meaning to be drawn from the myriad encounters of his sojourners, and lessons learned are tempered not with irony or snark, but with the contentment that knowledge gained is relational, and particular to the peculiar men and women that populate Denny’s epic landscape. Some symbols, characters and scenarios are a little too familiar, and the book’s triumphs may seem forgone conclusions, but engaged readers will be charmed and entertained. Those who appreciate fanciful adventure fiction sincerely told will enjoy Denny’s work and look forward to the next installment.
Pub Date: Dec. 14, 2011
ISBN: 978-0615451558
Page Count: 458
Publisher: Night Watch
Review Posted Online: Jan. 13, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2012
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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by Hanya Yanagihara ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 10, 2015
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.
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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
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by J.D. Salinger ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 15, 1951
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.
A violent surfacing of adolescence (which has little in common with Tarkington's earlier, broadly comic, Seventeen) has a compulsive impact.
"Nobody big except me" is the dream world of Holden Caulfield and his first person story is down to the basic, drab English of the pre-collegiate. For Holden is now being bounced from fancy prep, and, after a vicious evening with hall- and roommates, heads for New York to try to keep his latest failure from his parents. He tries to have a wild evening (all he does is pay the check), is terrorized by the hotel elevator man and his on-call whore, has a date with a girl he likes—and hates, sees his 10 year old sister, Phoebe. He also visits a sympathetic English teacher after trying on a drunken session, and when he keeps his date with Phoebe, who turns up with her suitcase to join him on his flight, he heads home to a hospital siege. This is tender and true, and impossible, in its picture of the old hells of young boys, the lonesomeness and tentative attempts to be mature and secure, the awful block between youth and being grown-up, the fright and sickness that humans and their behavior cause the challenging, the dramatization of the big bang. It is a sorry little worm's view of the off-beat of adult pressure, of contemporary strictures and conformity, of sentiment….
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.Pub Date: June 15, 1951
ISBN: 0316769177
Page Count: -
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1951
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