A rosy, feel-good sports tale.
A YA novel tells the story of teens’ coming-of-age in a football-obsessed city.
In Green Bay, Wisconsin, football is woven into the fabric of everyday life. Senior Janus Mann, the starting quarterback of his high school football team, has run afoul of his coach and is worrying he doesn’t have what it takes to be a leader. He is still mourning his dead father and has regular telepathic conversations with Curly Lambeau, the legendary (and deceased) coach of the Green Bay Packers. “Curly often replies with a voice in my head,” narrates Janus. “And no, it’s not my imagination, if that’s what you’re thinking.” Janus isn’t the only one with problems. His crush, the flute player Asha Silver, is struggling with her alcoholic ex-boxer father. Barnaby Grayna is the son of Janus’ coach, though he doesn’t play football because his amyotrophic lateral sclerosis has confined him to a wheelchair. The main antagonist in Barnaby’s life is his effective (but disrespectful) physical therapist. The three teens work together to get out from underneath the weights in their lives—physical limitations, parental expectations, and familial histories—in order to meet adulthood on their own terms. In a town that loves football, Janus, in particular, must contend with the ghosts of the past to free himself for the future. Mancheski (Shoot for the Stars, 2014, etc.) writes in an amiable prose that captures both Janus’ voice and the mysticism inherent in old-time football. Here Janus and Asha visit Lambeau Field: “ ‘Ghosts…’ I say....The wind through the empty seats creates a low pitch, like an oboe being played a quarter-mile away. If you close your eyes it becomes a monk-like hum. ‘Of twenty million Packer fans past.’ ” The characters are endearing and well-drawn, but the novel’s plot is somewhat shaggy and meandering. The book takes a long time to get to a fairly boilerplate ending, and it could easily be 100 pages shorter. But Mancheski deftly paints adolescence in the same dreamy nostalgia as the early days of football. It may not ring completely true to readers, but it’s a pleasant enough place to spend some time.
A rosy, feel-good sports tale.Pub Date: Nov. 22, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-4582-2121-6
Page Count: 372
Publisher: AbbottPress
Review Posted Online: March 8, 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
BOOK REVIEW
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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