This tale should prove entertaining for readers who enjoy amusing characters and a less pulpy style of intrigue.
A novel details the gossip and rumors surrounding a renowned theater family, as its would-be biographer searches for the truth.
The story is set in 1965 and most of it takes place in the quiet fictional town of Oldfield, Connecticut, not far from New York City. Jasper de Vole, columnist for the Scrutator, travels to Oldfield to conduct research for a biography on the Harts, a famous acting family that resided in the town. Rex and Dora Hart have died, and locals haven’t seen their daughter, Margot, for many years. But socialite Winifred “Freddie” Hart (who is not an actress) is agreeable and shows Jasper many artifacts in the family’s home of Coverdale, with the help of curmudgeonly housekeeper Mrs. Plunkett. Freddie even invites Jasper to take up residence at Coverdale, which he does. At first Jasper is taken in by the treasure trove of objects he is shown and the hospitality of Freddie, but he can’t shake the feeling that there is a bigger story to uncover and that the family is hiding something. He wonders about the disappearance of Margot, whom Freddie doesn’t mention. Living at Coverdale allows him to snoop around the house whenever he’s able to avoid Mrs. Plunkett. Meanwhile, Freddie’s property, Wilderhall, sits in disrepair, as she hasn’t used or maintained it for many years. And elsewhere in town, Margot’s old friend Whitty Daniels meets Mr. Moravec, a handsome Shakespeare scholar, who says he’s interested in purchasing Wilderhall. The story’s characters are likable and appealing, particularly Whitty, who loves the dilapidated Wilderhall (“There is a beauty in crumbling ruins, don’t you think? They engage the imagination: you have to complete them in your mind”). And Farewell’s (House Party, 2017, etc.) prose is bright and evocative. But it’s difficult to categorize this book—it lacks the fast pace and urgency of a thriller. It doesn’t always feel like a mystery either, because the knowledge that a character is missing is often imparted to readers first, and the players don’t have to expend death-defying efforts to learn crucial information. It’s a bit gentler than those genres while still remaining engaging for audiences that aren’t looking for heart-stopping suspense.
This tale should prove entertaining for readers who enjoy amusing characters and a less pulpy style of intrigue.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-9778509-7-6
Page Count: 238
Publisher: Puddingdale Press
Review Posted Online: Nov. 13, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
© Copyright 2025 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.
