There's little to distinguish this novel, but it hits nearly all the notes it aims for, and there's a tidy ending for those...
In this frothy, food-filled contemporary romance by Inclán (The Beautiful Being, 2012, etc.), the way to the heart is indeed through the stomach.
Desperate for a new direction in life, 27-year-old Becca Muchmore abruptly quits grad school and starts a baking business in San Francisco. This venture introduces her to a circle of customers who become potential friends, lovers and enemies. In particular, she develops an instant crush on preppy lawyer Jeff and encounters opposition from Jennifer, his beautiful but nasty lawyer girlfriend. Fortunately, Becca’s baking skills are so astonishing that everyone clamors for more. She hires her sexy neighbor Sal as her assistant, relying on his charm, good humor and uncanny ability to find parking to expand her business. At the same time, she chases Jeff and spies on Jennifer in an effort to win the love she assumes she wants. In an effort to address deeper issues, Inclán uses a single coincidence as a major theme: Sweet Becca is apparently the spitting image of mean Jennifer. However, this quirk is only intermittently thought noticeable or significant by most characters and in the end seems an unnecessary gimmick. The stock characters—including the boy next door, the perky secretary and the critical mother—break no new ground. It’s clear to the reader from the outset who belongs with whom, and getting to the happy ending requires tolerance for the cast’s unsurprising foibles. However, for readers desiring a more immersive experience, the book does include recipes for each treat mentioned in the story.
There's little to distinguish this novel, but it hits nearly all the notes it aims for, and there's a tidy ending for those looking for a comfort read.Pub Date: Oct. 21, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-957627-15-4
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Ghostwoods Books
Review Posted Online: Sept. 30, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2014
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.
Life lessons.
Angie Malone, the youngest of a big, warm Italian-American family, returns to her Pacific Northwest hometown to wrestle with various midlife disappointments: her divorce, Papa’s death, a downturn in business at the family restaurant, and, above all, her childlessness. After several miscarriages, she, a successful ad exec, and husband Conlan, a reporter, befriended a pregnant young girl and planned to adopt her baby—and then the birth mother changed her mind. Angie and Conlan drifted apart and soon found they just didn’t love each other anymore. Metaphorically speaking, “her need for a child had been a high tide, an overwhelming force that drowned them. A year ago, she could have kicked to the surface but not now.” Sadder but wiser, Angie goes to work in the struggling family restaurant, bickering with Mama over updating the menu and replacing the ancient waitress. Soon, Angie befriends another young girl, Lauren Ribido, who’s eager to learn and desperately needs a job. Lauren’s family lives on the wrong side of the tracks, and her mother is a promiscuous alcoholic, but Angie knows nothing of this sad story and welcomes Lauren into the DeSaria family circle. The girl listens in, wide-eyed, as the sisters argue and make wisecracks and—gee-whiz—are actually nice to each other. Nothing at all like her relationship with her sluttish mother, who throws Lauren out when boyfriend David, en route to Stanford, gets her pregnant. Will Lauren, who’s just been accepted to USC, let Angie adopt her baby? Well, a bit of a twist at the end keeps things from becoming too predictable.
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.Pub Date: July 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-345-46750-7
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2004
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
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