Part two of a trilogy that began with this 82-year-old author's Brules (1994): a breezy recounting of the slaughter and destruction of Native American tribes in the Old West. This time out, narrator Cat Brules tells of his days as Indian scout for the US Army, and of some of the most important campaigns against the ``hostiles.'' He begins with the events leading up to Custer's debacle against the Sioux, and though the outcome is as expected, Brules's story contains a new twist. Here, Custer is wounded before the battle (maybe even killed outright—Brules is too far away to be sure) by Sioux who have been alerted by a traitorous scout. Dismissed before the engagement, Brules watches as Custer's men carry their fallen leader to a questionable defensive position, and are then wiped out. The Army soon exacts its revenge on the Sioux, though the defeat is more the result of Sioux starvation than US military prowess. New conquests await, and Brules is soon on the trail of the fleeing Chief Joseph and his Nez Perce. Stopped from entering Canada, the Indians are shuttled back to the reservation, and Brules takes a rest. He meets a Mormon family, tries to help their cattle operation (by decimating the local grizzly population), and then runs off with the rancher's daughter. But Brules quickly returns to the fray when the Army requests his assistance in hunting down Geronimo. The details here are always vivid, especially during the many fierce battles, as Brules & Co. blast apart yet another well-deserving band of ``hostiles.'' But what to make of all this joyful genocide? Brules experiences only the briefest remorse, and this from a man who kills dozens and dozens of people—or are they people? Violent, brutal, ugly, and probably all too true. Killing on a grand scale, with little of that bothersome guilt.
Pub Date: June 16, 1995
ISBN: 0-385-31198-2
Page Count: 608
Publisher: Delacorte
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 1995
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
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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