A gripping, well-written story worth diving into.
This deceptive novel begins as an idyllic romance, then gears down and races to a gripping conclusion.
With a title that alludes to Othello and Desdemona, Qazi’s (Berlin Danse Macabre, 2013, etc.) novel tells the story of Robert, an American professor whose best years (and two marriages) are behind him, and Anara, a Kazakh woman half his age. They fall in love, and soon after, Robert gets yet another one-year teaching job, this time at a university in Kyrenia, a Turkish-controlled part of Cyprus. Anara comes to join him, and they make a home, almost a bower, in Karmi, a village halfway up the mountain overlooking Kyrenia. This is the idyllic part: Readers are introduced to secondary characters, among them Cardiff, the alcoholic but wise British colleague; Yulie, a young Greek woman who has strong hidden feelings for Robert; Erkan Bey, who is more than just a plumber; and other well-rounded background characters. But then there are the shady characters, principally Vitaly, a porcine, oily Russian casino owner. The plot turns on a simple fact: Anara’s visa is only for 60 days. Vitaly hires Anara to work in his casino and promises that the visa issue will no longer be a problem. All of a sudden, Vitaly has tricked Anara into working—for just one night, or so he says—at his other casino in the Greek sector. The rest of the book, where Qazi ramps up the story, concerns Robert’s desperate attempt to get Anara back. The story is told from Robert’s point of view, so readers get to know this man who just might have a second chance at life. The other characters are well-drawn, too, and Cyprus—beautiful, laid-back, exotic—is a character in its own right. The narrative makes no major missteps, though in places, the prose, if not purple, may be a bit mauve. Qazi, an experienced writer, is very good at his craft, and the pacing is really a wonder. Readers might find themselves putting off the last three chapters to savor them as a special treat.
A gripping, well-written story worth diving into.Pub Date: Jan. 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-8189738747
Page Count: 376
Publisher: Niyogi Books
Review Posted Online: June 11, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 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 strict report, worthy of sympathy.
A violent surfacing of adolescence (which has little in common with Tarkington's earlier, broadly comic, Seventeen) has a compulsive impact.
"Nobody big except me" is the dream world of Holden Caulfield and his first person story is down to the basic, drab English of the pre-collegiate. For Holden is now being bounced from fancy prep, and, after a vicious evening with hall- and roommates, heads for New York to try to keep his latest failure from his parents. He tries to have a wild evening (all he does is pay the check), is terrorized by the hotel elevator man and his on-call whore, has a date with a girl he likes—and hates, sees his 10 year old sister, Phoebe. He also visits a sympathetic English teacher after trying on a drunken session, and when he keeps his date with Phoebe, who turns up with her suitcase to join him on his flight, he heads home to a hospital siege. This is tender and true, and impossible, in its picture of the old hells of young boys, the lonesomeness and tentative attempts to be mature and secure, the awful block between youth and being grown-up, the fright and sickness that humans and their behavior cause the challenging, the dramatization of the big bang. It is a sorry little worm's view of the off-beat of adult pressure, of contemporary strictures and conformity, of sentiment….
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.Pub Date: June 15, 1951
ISBN: 0316769177
Page Count: -
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1951
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
APPRECIATIONS
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