More than just a complex coming-of-age story, this potent book makes an indelible impression.
In this debut novel, two brothers remain close until a tragic death rocks their family.
The Hopkins family—being of mixed race—stands out in the small town of Preston, Connecticut. Fourth-generation members Langston and Trajan are three years apart. Langston, who excels at taekwondo, dreams of competing in the Olympics. But when he falls for his beautiful classmate Angelica Chu, her older brother, Albert, self-proclaimed protector of his sister, fights Langston. He pushes him, and Langston ends up hitting his head, which causes permanent brain damage; he endures seizures and develops a learning disorder. The boys’ father, Chester, and their mother, Dottie, a kind, plainspoken teacher’s aide, drift apart—and Chester takes up with another woman. The boys’ grandfather Tuke fills in, steadily imparting wisdom about love and life to his grandsons. And then tragedy strikes the Hopkins family again; Langston dies while being held in police custody for simple trespassing. Dottie mourns, holed up in her bedroom, while Trajan wanders—following his friends toward trouble, exploring the newly discovered world of love and sex, and feeling lost without Langston to smooth the way for him. Dramatic surprises round out the conclusion, with descriptions worthy of cinematic translation. Quotable quotes abound (“Run from your troubles, and there’s no place the devil won’t find you. Stand your ground, and the devil just may go nosing around elsewhere”) as well as offbeat humor and lovely prose. Some phrases are shining standouts and must be reread to fully appreciate their subtlety, curvy flow, and euphonious cadence. But there are challenges for the reader in Mayberry’s semiautobiographical tale: the plot isn’t linear, and the author makes unexpected stops along the way, sometimes suddenly diving into the background of a character who’s just been introduced. This hopscotching narrative might be off-putting to some, but to a patient reader, it imparts a multilayered richness to the story and a striking clarity to the characters’ relationships.
More than just a complex coming-of-age story, this potent book makes an indelible impression.Pub Date: March 5, 2013
ISBN: 978-1-938416-13-2
Page Count: 330
Publisher: River Grove Books
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
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
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