As the book draws to a close, Billy has finally attained a fullness of character that he had previously lacked–a wisdom only...
An eager young soldier learns lasting life lessons during the Civil War.
William Joseph Butler is the youngest son of a prominent family in Drew County, Arkansas. The scholarly youth is left behind when his brother–along with the rest of the South–gets swept up with Confederate fever and sets off north to conquer the Yanks. Billy grows restless as the war rages, the bravado and glory of the distant battle never far from his thoughts. One day, he mistakenly stumbles upon two men committing a horrendous crime and intercedes, narrowly escaping. Realizing the danger his son faces, Billy’s father immediately enlists him in the Confederate army, far from vengeance’s reach. Billy is soon overcome with notions of battlefield heroics and is persuaded he can win his sweetheart’s love if he is valiant enough. But his naïveté renders him oblivious to the suffering and death that inevitably accompany war. Billy and his fellow soldiers are eager to prove themselves; in one poignant scene, a private attempts to trade rations for a spot in combat. The request is refused, in a fortunate turn, as the soldier is killed moments later in battle. The young regiment learns the hard truths of war as the fighting progresses, enduring injuries and the loss of comrades. Putting the inhuman elements of war into words is a difficult task for any writer and several passages take a sharp detour into the melodramatic as triumphant soldiers are quickly elevated to superhuman status. For the most part, however, Willis writes in an elegant, evocative style and maintains a strong literary touch. He deftly envisions the inane conversations that might occur in the face of enemy fire–mundane requests for the canteen or observations of the natural world around them.
As the book draws to a close, Billy has finally attained a fullness of character that he had previously lacked–a wisdom only achieved through suffering and loss. An erudite, coming-of-age war novel.Pub Date: Dec. 18, 2007
ISBN: 978-0-59568849-4
Page Count: -
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: Jan. 5, 2011
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
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