A believable tale about an earnest boy’s life-changing summer.
A sensitive preteen is sent off to work as a stable boy in Wisconsin in Blossom’s (Trespassing, 2017) novel.
Michael Bentley starts the summer of 1969 as a shy 13-year-old theater aficionado and a reluctant worker at Lakeside Stables, which sells rides to attendees at nearby camps. Michael’s mother suffers from multiple sclerosis, and with finances tight, the family can’t afford his normal summer activities, which include theater and golfing. He’s the runt of the Lakeside group, which includes the college-aged bosses Hank Nelson and Cal Masterson, and experienced teens Wyatt Moretti, Earl Thorne, Parker Moretti, and Lenny White. The five teens are the so-called “peons” at the stables, who must rise early and do grunt work. Together, the boys wrangle horses, ride them between two camps, and entertain campers with made-up stories of various antics. Michael, for instance, is called “Coolidge” by one of the bosses, and he quickly adopts a goofy, tough persona to go with the new moniker. But in trying to keep up with the older boys, Coolidge, or “Cool” for short, often finds himself out of his depth. They dare him to take on risky challenges, such as riding a hostile horse or showering under a stream of water pouring from an abandoned, rotting mill. Blossom, through his wide-eyed narrator, creates a character that readers can root for. Cool, despite his false name, is an honest, self-aware guide through the rough-and-tumble world of the titular horse boys, clearly identifying the thrills of peer pressure and the insecurity of young adulthood. This is particularly true when the subject of girls comes up: Wyatt, Earl, Parker, and Lenny all tell exciting tales of midnight rides that pique Cool’s curiosity about the opposite sex. However, they also start to change the way that he thinks about women. At one point, for instance, he entertains a comparison between girls and horses (“Maybe it was a bit like using the breaking corral for horses: control the location, whittle away resistance slowly, insist on results”). Readers will find such naïveté chilling but compelling.
A believable tale about an earnest boy’s life-changing summer.Pub Date: Dec. 2, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-981248-63-6
Page Count: 272
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Oct. 2, 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
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Dated sermonizing on career versus motherhood, and conflict driven by characters’ willed helplessness, sap this tale of...
Lifelong, conflicted friendship of two women is the premise of Hannah’s maudlin latest (Magic Hour, 2006, etc.), again set in Washington State.
Tallulah “Tully” Hart, father unknown, is the daughter of a hippie, Cloud, who makes only intermittent appearances in her life. Tully takes refuge with the family of her “best friend forever,” Kate Mularkey, who compares herself unfavorably with Tully, in regards to looks and charisma. In college, “TullyandKate” pledge the same sorority and major in communications. Tully has a life goal for them both: They will become network TV anchorwomen. Tully lands an internship at KCPO-TV in Seattle and finagles a producing job for Kate. Kate no longer wishes to follow Tully into broadcasting and is more drawn to fiction writing, but she hesitates to tell her overbearing friend. Meanwhile a love triangle blooms at KCPO: Hard-bitten, irresistibly handsome, former war correspondent Johnny is clearly smitten with Tully. Expecting rejection, Kate keeps her infatuation with Johnny secret. When Tully lands a reporting job with a Today-like show, her career shifts into hyperdrive. Johnny and Kate had started an affair once Tully moved to Manhattan, and when Kate gets pregnant with daughter Marah, they marry. Kate is content as a stay-at-home mom, but frets about being Johnny’s second choice and about her unrealized writing ambitions. Tully becomes Seattle’s answer to Oprah. She hires Johnny, which spells riches for him and Kate. But Kate’s buttons are fully depressed by pitched battles over slutwear and curfews with teenaged Marah, who idolizes her godmother Tully. In an improbable twist, Tully invites Kate and Marah to resolve their differences on her show, only to blindside Kate by accusing her, on live TV, of overprotecting Marah. The BFFs are sundered. Tully’s latest attempt to salvage Cloud fails: The incorrigible, now geriatric hippie absconds once more. Just as Kate develops a spine, she’s given some devastating news. Will the friends reconcile before it’s too late?
Dated sermonizing on career versus motherhood, and conflict driven by characters’ willed helplessness, sap this tale of poignancy.Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2008
ISBN: 978-0-312-36408-3
Page Count: 496
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2007
BOOK TO SCREEN
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