A curious, intriguing effort to retell a classic through the eyes of an iconic character, but several unanswered questions...
A unique twist on a time-honored tale that interweaves several literary characters.
Writing under the pen name of the “Holy Ghost Writer,” the author retells Alexandre Dumas’ well-known story from 1844. This time, however, the saga is told from the perspective of Sherlock Holmes. With right-hand man and chronicler Dr. Watson by his side, he regales Watson with this adventure for “literary posterity.” But it’s not all tied up in a nice little bow. Holmes chronicles Dumas’ story about Edmond Dantes, who starts off young, idealistic and happy before his life takes a drastic turn for the worse when he’s wrongly accused of a crime and serves years in prison as a result. Over time, his idealism fades and is replaced with a desire for revenge as he witnesses the limitations of the criminal justice system. He befriends a man in prison who ultimately dies and leaves Dantes with his fortune. Once free, Dantes sets out to punish the enemies responsible for his misfortune, taking on the guise of the wealthy and mysterious Count of Monte Cristo. Readers reunite with the detective and his companion in brief interludes throughout the book, as the two break to marvel at the adventure or sit down for a meal. The tale touches on many themes—justice, vengeance, hope, forgiveness—but it’s not clear why this story is being retold; perhaps the planned sequels will explain. In addition, the dialogue often feels forced and unrealistic. For instance, when Holmes promises to tell the story of the Sultan of Albania, Watson declares: “Absolutely wonderful….I really cannot wait to hear and record every detail....I am dying to find out what happens to my favorite characters, especially the world’s most elusive personality.”
A curious, intriguing effort to retell a classic through the eyes of an iconic character, but several unanswered questions remain.Pub Date: July 4, 2013
ISBN: 978-1490927305
Page Count: 566
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Nov. 6, 2013
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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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