Warm and chummy exploration of how friends can become our chosen families.
The sudden death of their close friend in a terrorist attack triggers big changes in the lives of four school friends who reunite after 20 years.
When affable British-born internet mogul Tom Fitzgerald’s Boston-bound train is bombed, his stunned friends get together at his memorial service in London to reflect on his, and their own, lives. All in their late 30s, the group includes journalist Paul, Hollywood actress Saffron and earthy Olivia, who runs an animal shelter. There is also Tom’s longtime “best friend” Holly, a part-time illustrator and mother of two married to a rich lawyer. On the surface, their lives appear placid enough, but as they rekindle their friendship the cracks appear. Onetime womanizer Paul is happily married to Swedish businesswoman Anna, but the two are going broke over repeated in-vitro treatments that the increasingly child-desperate Anna insists on having. Olivia, in contrast, finds herself single and pregnant, and at a loss over what to do. Saffron is a recovering alcoholic carrying on a secret relationship with a married movie star she met in AA. And Holly—perhaps hit hardest by Tom’s death—feels increasingly alienated from her pompous prig of a husband Marcus, and preoccupied over what might have been with Tom if the two had only acted on their attraction, and not married other people. In her vulnerable state, Holly grows closer to Tom’s younger brother Will, a charming carpenter who nursed a secret crush on her when they were kids. Another crisis tightens the group after Saffron’s affair is exposed, and she falls off the wagon. Then they all congregate at Paul and Anna’s dilapidated rural home, for more bonding, rebuilding and assorted country shenanigans. Considering its subject matter, Green’s latest (Swapping Lives, 2006, etc.) is neither morbid nor overly sentimental, with sensible and appealing characters who, for the most part, end up doing the right thing.
Warm and chummy exploration of how friends can become our chosen families.Pub Date: June 19, 2007
ISBN: 978-0-670-03857-2
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2007
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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BOOK REVIEW
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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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