Needs more flesh on its bones, though extensive research and complex plots are signs of good things to come.
A Christian, an outcast ninja, and a courtesan—outsiders in late samurai-era Nagasaki—seek new life in this historical novella.
By 1865, Christianity has spread to Japan in small pockets, and Rutu keeps the faith in secret as she searches for her sister Suzu, who has become an oiran, a kind of courtesan-entertainer. Meanwhile, Suzu’s hymns inspire her compatriot Kurenai and remind her of Naomi, an early mentor; but the songs and prayers aren’t quite enough to distract Kurenai from her woeful life in the brothel. Finally, the teenage boy Jin, an escaped ninja from a nearby region, ends up in Rutu’s care after washing up on Nagasaki’s shore. It’s Jin who later saves Kurenai from the bandits who attack her “litter” and murder Kanayama, the man who bought her for company. Once the three unite—Suzu’s plot takes her to another island and a happy ending—they begin a journey down dangerous roads in search of Jin’s mother. Yumiko’s (Isolated Connected Kyu-shu Island, 2013) handling of this three-pronged plot is sometimes effective and swift, jumping from scene to scene at just the right moments. However, many of the novella’s scenes are too brief, and the lengthy gaps of time between scenes often make for confusing storytelling. Yumiko shows off solid research, which enables her to effectively narrate a unique historical moment. Yet the result is a flat read due to repeated failures to allow readers to come to their own conclusions: “Rutu and Jin sensed that they were different, yet they were both minorities.” Still, Yumiko’s strong grasp of setting and plot suggests plenty of potential for future works.
Needs more flesh on its bones, though extensive research and complex plots are signs of good things to come.Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-49-437225-5
Page Count: 62
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Nov. 11, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
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 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
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
APPRECIATIONS
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