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THE HUMMING BIRD BOOK 1

MADNESS IN CRESCENDO

A surrealist novel of political intrigue.
The De Wardins’ debut is set in the fictional country of Voskia. As a duchess, Maria Langlord has led a privileged life, but this 19-year-old is not the perfect debutante her parents and their acquaintances believe her to be. Secretly she’s been taking ballet lessons in Unsettled Town, which, though geographically close, is greatly removed from the world Maria has always known. It is here that she meets and becomes involved with a cast of peculiar characters and once again comes in contact with the dangerous but dashing violinist that crashed her birthday party. There’s political unrest in Voskia: a new political party and a presidential candidate, Hillborn, whose racist ideology is stirring up trouble. Maria’s parents and governess have fallen under his spell, even as Maria is making new friends among the Romanies that the party despises. Maria is pulled into the thick of things when she learns that she has an uncle she’s never met and when she’s entrusted with valuable, coveted information. Hillborn’s campaign grows in strength, in part because he has a habit of killing off the opposition. Maria is caught between two worlds, and the actions she takes lead to a cliffhanger ending that sets the stage for a sequel. The novel has a dreamlike quality, particularly in the descriptions of Maria’s forays to Unsettled Town. The wordy writing style has the feel of something written with a thesaurus in one hand: “Lord Byronaless, his bejewelled hands wriggling over his covered cranium, bravely let his short legs laboriously take his stout self in the direction of the individual who had fired: Chief of Police Croft Rainhard.” Elsewhere, foreign phrases—“Isso ai meu povo! Samba no pe!”—and a few other terms are clarified in footnotes. Still, the imaginary setting and undefined time period allow for comparisons to historical and modern events, and readers who can wade through the clunky text will find an intriguing story with a sympathetic protagonist.

Surrealist scenes and complicated language get in the way of an exciting, suspenseful story that’s part coming-of-age tale, part political thriller.

Pub Date: Nov. 19, 2012

ISBN: 978-1479747436

Page Count: 374

Publisher: Xlibris

Review Posted Online: Nov. 14, 2014

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A LITTLE LIFE

The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.

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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

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THE CATCHER IN THE RYE

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

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