A timely, meticulously wrought tale of young manhood gone wrong that never quite gets to the heart of the matter.
In Graham’s debut novel, a troubled young man experiences tragedy when he goes too far in his quest to become a hometown hero.
When Officer Peter Logan of the Smithton, Ill., police department arrives at Mike Burke’s home to arrest him, the events unfold with a weary inevitability: Mike doesn’t bother to resist, and his parents sadly stand by on the front porch. As residents of the small, economically depressed town drive by, they slow down to eagerly catch a glimpse of the action. Years of gradual marginalization led Mike to this point, and his story unfolds in a series of methodical flashbacks triggered by Mike’s police-car ride through town. Readers learn that Peter and Mike played cops and robbers together as children and that Peter, the son of a real-life policeman, always made Mike play the bad guy. As the years went by, Peter developed into a callous, confident high-school sports star while Mike grew increasingly withdrawn and fixated on hypermasculine role models such as Rocky Balboa and a local Desert Storm veteran. Mike’s attempt to enlist in the Army after high school was stymied by a birth defect—the “inverted heart” of the novel’s title. As a grown man living at home and working at a dead-end grocery store job, Mike’s hunger for recognition finally gave way to a misguided act of violence that no one saw coming. At its most effective, Graham’s slow, methodical prose manages to mimic the gradual erosion of Mike’s humanity. His decidedly thin characterizations of most of the supporting players also hint at Mike’s increasingly impassive regard for others—a trait that eventually leads to his downfall. Too often, however, these devices make for rather tedious reading, particularly for those seeking a closer connection to the characters. They impose a psychological distance that may prevent readers from truly relating to Mike, or the reasons behind his numbing crime.
A timely, meticulously wrought tale of young manhood gone wrong that never quite gets to the heart of the matter.Pub Date: Dec. 18, 2013
ISBN: 978-1492714217
Page Count: 288
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Feb. 26, 2014
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 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
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
bookshelf
