Breezy and memorable, Segundo’s fictionalized memoir details the carefree days of youth as well as the dire consequences of...
The R-rated fictional memoir of a man’s two-year journey from college graduation to incarceration on a rape charge.
In this embellished chronicle, Segundo presents himself as 22, single, frustrated, and unemployed, a recent college grad resigned to desperately fantasizing about storefront mannequins for entertainment. The depressing difficulties in finding gainful employment in his chosen field (sociology) as well as a glaring lack of a love life weighed on this kindhearted if socially awkward dork with a bachelor’s degree and few prospects. After a rather calamitous skiing weekend with womanizing college buddy Dave and female-challenged beekeeper Graham, Segundo finally scored a job at a school for handicapped children. There, head teacher Maura Wood immediately captured his attention and eventually his heart, as detailed in pages of corny musings and explicit sex scenes: “Lost in her timeless rhythm, she ebbed and flowed like a tropical tide.” Segundo gushes, “I washed ashore on her wave.” Once accepted by Maura’s skeptical pregnant friend, Judith, the lovers bonded over the limitations of the “speds” they assisted at school and fell deeper in love; they also attempted to dissuade Graham from romantically pursuing Judith. For all its harmless narrative banter and romantic innocence, the story takes a dark turn: Maura dumped Segundo and he began to date uppity, high-maintenance Sandra, though a rekindling with Maura sparked an accusation of rape and unleashed a torrent of damning legalities. Segundo ended up being convicted as a rapist and sentenced to five to seven years at a minimum-security penitentiary; he served three years and was released on probation. His unsuccessful plight to clear his name demonstrates the imbalanced nature of the U.S. justice system and the panicked torture of being an innocent man at the mercy of it. Chatty, digressive, and flush with opinionated asides, Segundo’s story concludes with some ambiguity as to how much of it is has actually been fictionalized, which only deepens its allure.
Breezy and memorable, Segundo’s fictionalized memoir details the carefree days of youth as well as the dire consequences of a sexual misunderstanding.Pub Date: Nov. 12, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-9882085-1-3
Page Count: 302
Publisher: Tillerman Publishing
Review Posted Online: May 29, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2015
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 first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.
Pub Date: July 11, 1960
ISBN: 0060935464
Page Count: 323
Publisher: Lippincott
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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