An often colorful novel that refreshingly doesn’t fall back on clichés.
Two troubled Trinidadian women discover a surprising connection in this debut novel.
Trinidadian immigrant Bea Clark is a successful history professor living in Boston, but despite her accomplishments, she suffers from crippling depression. Her low self-esteem springs both from her father’s abandonment of the family when she was young and her mother’s near-constant criticism (including typical belittling comments such as “I don't know what I do wrong in this life to deserve a child like you”). After Bea lands in a psychiatric facility following a nervous breakdown, she starts the slow process of rebuilding her life, including shifting her career to clinical psychology. In Trinidad, 15-year-old Tina Ramlogan is also adrift, as her mother, Nalini, refuses to divulge the identity of her father. When Nalini dies in a tragic accident, orphaned Tina is sent to live in Port of Spain with her stern, conservative grandmother, and before long, Tina is acting out in typical teenage fashion. When a twist of fate brings Tina and Bea together, they discover a hidden connection that may help them create a new family—and finally give them both the sense of belonging they long for. Readers will find it a pleasure to watch Bea and Tina evolve as their circumstances change over the courses of their story arcs. Persaud offers an equally enjoyable glimpse into the close-knit, and sometimes-claustrophobic, Trinidadian society. Tina’s first-person narration is lively and humorous, delivered in a distinctive island patois that makes the feisty teen jump off the page. Bea’s sections, written in a more distant third person, lack the same intimacy, and as a result, she’s less distinct—more a combination of traits than a full-fledged person. The shifts in point of view can be jarring at times, and readers may occasionally feel as if two separate novels have been awkwardly stitched together. In the end, however, the characters’ deep pain, particularly Tina’s, comes through in a story that illustrates the cancerous power of long-held family secrets and the relief that can come from finally confronting the truth.
An often colorful novel that refreshingly doesn’t fall back on clichés.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2013
ISBN: 978-0992697709
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Blue China Press
Review Posted Online: Nov. 22, 2013
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 first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.
Pub Date: July 11, 1960
ISBN: 0060935464
Page Count: 323
Publisher: Lippincott
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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