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SOME CAME RUNNING

To all who felt that From Here to Eternity, with all its crudities, nonetheless showed promise in a newcomer, Some Came Running, will be a sharp disappointment. To those who felt it was overpraised, overwritten, nihilistic in its philosophy, this second book is more — much more — of the same. To this reader, who felt that the disputed Peyton Place had moments of good writing and an overall pace of good story telling, marred by dependence on sexual excesses and overloaded with the seven deadly sins concentrated in one New England town — Some Came Running makes Peyton Place a Sunday School story. The seven deadly sins are magnified, distorted, perverted and multiplied — and presented with extremes of vulgarity, laced with four letter words. It has nothing — repeat nothing — to recommend it. The story, if one can extract any story from it, begins with a returned veteran, back in his home town, determined to take revenge on his brother, and show up the town and its inhabitants. He links his fortunes with a group of drifters, male and female — not a credible person in the lot. He is attracted to a young woman, whose chief shame is that she is still a virgin — and can't seem to take the hurdle. But his goal is to sleep with her, not to marry her. When he fails — he marries the town whore. The two reasonably normal and likable people in the whole cast of characters turn out to be obsessed by pornographic pictures! In fact pornography and depraved forms of sexual expression obsess everyone, including — quite obviously — the author. It is a distasteful and unrelievedly boring orgy in the manure pile. And it is so badly written that at no moment in its ghastly length does Jones hold out hope that he is likely to write another creditable book.

Pub Date: June 15, 1957

ISBN: 0440182611

Page Count: 1195

Publisher: Scribner

Review Posted Online: Sept. 26, 2011

Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1957

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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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TELL ME LIES

There are unforgettable beauties in this very sexy story.

Passion, friendship, heartbreak, and forgiveness ring true in Lovering's debut, the tale of a young woman's obsession with a man who's "good at being charming."

Long Island native Lucy Albright, starts her freshman year at Baird College in Southern California, intending to study English and journalism and become a travel writer. Stephen DeMarco, an upperclassman, is a political science major who plans to become a lawyer. Soon after they meet, Lucy tells Stephen an intensely personal story about the Unforgivable Thing, a betrayal that turned Lucy against her mother. Stephen pretends to listen to Lucy's painful disclosure, but all his thoughts are about her exposed black bra strap and her nipples pressing against her thin cotton T-shirt. It doesn't take Lucy long to realize Stephen's a "manipulative jerk" and she is "beyond pathetic" in her desire for him, but their lives are now intertwined. Their story takes seven years to unfold, but it's a fast-paced ride through hookups, breakups, and infidelities fueled by alcohol and cocaine and with oodles of sizzling sexual tension. "Lucy was an itch, a song stuck in your head or a movie you need to rewatch or a food you suddenly crave," Stephen says in one of his point-of-view chapters, which alternate with Lucy's. The ending is perfect, as Lucy figures out the dark secret Stephen has kept hidden and learns the difference between lustful addiction and mature love.

There are unforgettable beauties in this very sexy story.

Pub Date: June 12, 2018

ISBN: 978-1-5011-6964-9

Page Count: 352

Publisher: Atria

Review Posted Online: March 19, 2018

Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2018

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