This well-written work benefits from the heroine’s admirable willingness to examine herself honestly.
In this debut novel, a married woman confronts her might-have-beens and searches for her true self.
Annie Tucker, her husband, Gordon, and their three young children have spent many peripatetic years in Asia as Gordon climbed the career ladder. Now, in 1997, with the handover of Hong Kong approaching, they’ve moved back to the United States and are decamping to Martha’s Vineyard for the summer to stay in the small house left to Annie by her beloved Aunt Faye. Annie possesses many warm memories of the island’s beauty—and of Chase St. Clair, the former love of her life. When Gordon is called back to Hong Kong to deal with an emergency lasting weeks, perfectionist Annie must manage things, and soon becomes overwhelmed by the difficulties of life without a nanny or an instant expatriate community. When Annie nearly drowns after getting caught in a riptide and tells Gordon, significantly toning down the story, he doesn’t seem to listen, hurting her feelings. Vulnerable from the scare and sad about Faye, Annie runs into Chase (still handsome, still broad-shouldered, now married with kids), and strong emotions are stirred in both. Annie must figure out how real her feelings are for Chase; in the meantime, she makes some friends, acquires a dog and a mother’s helper, and faces down her now biggest fear: the ocean. In the process, she becomes more accepting of life’s cracks and imperfections. In her novel, Eger shows herself to be an intelligent, sensitive storyteller with a strong sense of place, vividly evoking the Vineyard’s residents, landmarks, shops, and atmosphere. She writes dialogue, creates characters, and develops her tale with great skill. But Annie’s life is so privileged that her very mild conflicts can fail to engage the reader. As she admits, “A lot of women would kill to have my problems.” Perhaps on this account, Eger gins up drama with Annie’s second dangerous swim; unlike so much of the book, which unfolds more naturally, this episode feels like contrived, forced redemption—even ending with an all-too-symbolic rainbow.
This well-written work benefits from the heroine’s admirable willingness to examine herself honestly.Pub Date: Aug. 5, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-9978351-0-6
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Conzett Verlag
Review Posted Online: Sept. 15, 2016
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
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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