In an overstuffed plot studded with historical minutiae, the story’s small domestic and internal moments are what ring true.
Gilmore debuts with a familiar yet evocative multigenerational epic intertwining the lives of Jewish immigrants as they rise from humble beginnings in Brooklyn to positions of power in science, business and the theater.
After his older brother, Solomon, disgraces his family by becoming a bootlegging gangster during Prohibition, Joseph Brodsky makes himself into the perfect mensch. He marries up, to a lawyer’s daughter, earns a decent living selling cleaning products and invents “Essoil,” a revolutionary two-in-one solution. Solomon, aka Terry the Terrier, has run off with the Brodskys’ beautiful neighbor Pauline, leaving behind Pauline’s younger, plainer sister Francis to provide for her heartbroken parents. Working as a letter-writer for illiterate immigrants, Francis finds her calling as an actress. Despite her secret love for Joseph, she ends up in a happy marriage with Vladimir, a scientist at Westinghouse who creates the first television camera. Francis tries to convince Solomon, then Joseph, to back Vladimir’s work. Both say no, but Solomon’s well-spoken henchman, Seymour, quickly recognizes the possibilities. Married to an educated but increasingly insane Long Island girl, Seymour, whose Jewish mother emigrated from France, started out as a salesman, eventually settling into mob work. He invests in television as a way out of the gangster life. Soon, he’s pursuing his dream of becoming a Broadway producer, though Joseph will always consider him a mobster. After a failed turn in Seymour’s first production, Francis becomes the star of TV commercials for Essoil, which makes Joseph millions. Meanwhile, Solomon goes to prison and Pauline disappears. Years later, Joseph’s daughter and Seymour’s son fall in love and marry. After Joseph’s death, Pauline shows up with a surprising new identity.
In an overstuffed plot studded with historical minutiae, the story’s small domestic and internal moments are what ring true.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-7432-8863-7
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2006
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
Too beholden to sentimentality and cliché, this novel fails to establish a uniquely realized perspective.
Hunter’s debut novel tracks the experiences of her family members during the Holocaust.
Sol and Nechuma Kurc, wealthy, cultured Jews in Radom, Poland, are successful shop owners; they and their grown children live a comfortable lifestyle. But that lifestyle is no protection against the onslaught of the Holocaust, which eventually scatters the members of the Kurc family among several continents. Genek, the oldest son, is exiled with his wife to a Siberian gulag. Halina, youngest of all the children, works to protect her family alongside her resistance-fighter husband. Addy, middle child, a composer and engineer before the war breaks out, leaves Europe on one of the last passenger ships, ending up thousands of miles away. Then, too, there are Mila and Felicia, Jakob and Bella, each with their own share of struggles—pain endured, horrors witnessed. Hunter conducted extensive research after learning that her grandfather (Addy in the book) survived the Holocaust. The research shows: her novel is thorough and precise in its details. It’s less precise in its language, however, which frequently relies on cliché. “You’ll get only one shot at this,” Halina thinks, enacting a plan to save her husband. “Don’t botch it.” Later, Genek, confronting a routine bit of paperwork, must decide whether or not to hide his Jewishness. “That form is a deal breaker,” he tells himself. “It’s life and death.” And: “They are low, it seems, on good fortune. And something tells him they’ll need it.” Worse than these stale phrases, though, are the moments when Hunter’s writing is entirely inadequate for the subject matter at hand. Genek, describing the gulag, calls the nearest town “a total shitscape.” This is a low point for Hunter’s writing; elsewhere in the novel, it’s stronger. Still, the characters remain flat and unknowable, while the novel itself is predictable. At this point, more than half a century’s worth of fiction and film has been inspired by the Holocaust—a weighty and imposing tradition. Hunter, it seems, hasn’t been able to break free from her dependence on it.
Too beholden to sentimentality and cliché, this novel fails to establish a uniquely realized perspective.Pub Date: Feb. 14, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-399-56308-9
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Nov. 21, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2016
BOOK TO SCREEN
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