While it flaunts an unwieldy title and subtitle, this volume offers largely accessible tales that feature creativity,...
A collection of 14 short stories explores diverse subjects.
Mulrooney (An Equation of Almost Infinite Complexity, 2016, etc.) begins this work on a high note with the title story, in which he presents anthropomorphic accounts of the lives of bees, flowers, weeds, and ants. To his credit, he manages to convey the imagined emotions of Fraulein Krause, a worker bee facing the end of her life span, and Esther, a flower that endures the pollination process, portrayed in brutally sexual terms. Another standout narrative with a surreal flavor is “The Heart of Ernest Bodkin,” in which the title character is so desperate (and unable) to end a relationship that his heart literally ends up in the toilet. Throughout the book, Mulrooney often employs a textual space and an asterisk to indicate a shift of perspective, a technique that is both helpful and effective, as it guides readers and widens the circles of consciousness. This device adds layers to “St. Christopher, Now Presumed a Legend,” in which Corinne McQueen, an investigative reporter, manipulates all of the parties in a custody dispute that resulted in a mother and son on the run. Through shrewd interview methods and additional footage, Corinne cynically and coolly covers all of her bases as events unfold and public perceptions shift. This story, whose title fittingly makes reference to the patron saint of children and travelers, provides a devastating critique of the machinations of the news media for the sake of ratings and self-promotion. “Our Hearts Are Restless Until” involves the lonely and unattractive Joanne Burns; her sketchy suitor, Mr. Malley (whose wife disappeared years earlier); and her elderly mother. The truncated nature of the title suggests the element of mystery that pervades this piece. Here Mulrooney skillfully shifts the narrative focus from daughter to mother, along with an abiding sense of loneliness that should resonate with readers. Another highlight is “Terry and the Moon and Me,” which documents the heartbreaking effects of leukemia on a family of four. Overall, this collection contains innumerable turns of phrase both lovely and clever, as in this elegiac story, where winter is described as the time when “the inside of your nose feels like glass.”
While it flaunts an unwieldy title and subtitle, this volume offers largely accessible tales that feature creativity, insight, and depth of feeling.Pub Date: Sept. 21, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-9906991-0-1
Page Count: 216
Publisher: 188 Cassandra Books
Review Posted Online: Jan. 16, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2018
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
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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