Peterson offers an amusing take on the mating habits of the Manhattan elite. And while the story holds few surprises, it...
Busy Manhattan mom in a shaky marriage to a self-absorbed lawyer hires a strapping young hipster to spend quality time with her neglected son, in Emmy-winning, former ABC News producer Peterson’s debut.
With a fulfilling TV producer job, three healthy kids and a fabulous Upper East Side apartment, Jamie Whitfield is grateful for the hand she has been dealt, in spite of her less-than-perfect relationship with her difficult husband Phillip. A spoiled preppy prone to ridiculous temper tantrums, Phillip is also a workaholic who spends very little time with his family. This has taken a toll on nine-year-old Dylan, who has become sad, distant and unable to deal with disappointment. Thinking that her boy would benefit from a stabilizing male force, Jamie interviews a series of college-aged potential mannies without luck. Her prayers are answered when she sees Peter Bailey working with a group of special needs youngsters in the park. He might only be substituting for a friend, but he is a natural with kids. The 29-year-old Colorado native is no dumb bunny either: He’s an Internet entrepreneur waiting on funding for a big project. Peter agrees to take Jamie’s well-paying and flexible gig at least until his money comes through. Once in her house, Peter proves to be outgoing and warm. He has a positive effect on the kids, with Dylan overcoming his issues under Peter’s big-brotherly wing. Peter also has an unexpected (to Jamie, if not the reader) effect on Mom, helping her see the hypocrisy of the hoity-toity world in which she lives, and getting her to stick up for herself at home and at work. Things with Phillip, meanwhile, continue to erode, and Jamie begins to realize she might have feelings for “the help.”
Peterson offers an amusing take on the mating habits of the Manhattan elite. And while the story holds few surprises, it benefits greatly from an attractive pair of would-be lovers.Pub Date: June 19, 2007
ISBN: 978-0-385-34040-3
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Dial Books
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2007
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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