A profound and mature debut collection. In these 12 stories, Mogan creates a memorable cast of characters and places: Niobe, the black maid who arranges for her granddaughter to have a better life than she did in ``A Certain Lot or Parcel of Land''; Kenny and Jack, the lovers dying of AIDS together in ``See to Appreciate''; the Golden Gardens home of the title story where life is more real than in the real world; and the dust-blown West Texas town of Floydada, in ``See Ya Later, Floydada,'' ``perched on its shrivelled haunches.'' The author conveys a great deal in her brief tales about the psyches of her characters, and about the complexity of Southern society. The locations- -Louisiana and Texas—become familiar through these pages, and Mogan's characters, too, form themselves into a community of sorts, some reappearing in a number of stories. Each vignette is also a world unto itself, sometimes shocking, sometimes tragic, occasionally hopeful. What is most striking is the writer's ability to approach her subjects from all sides: She flows in and out of different characters' consciousnesses: a five-year-old El Salvadoran refugee and the conductor of the train that hurtles towards him through the Texas wilderness in ``Desparachos''; the 11- year-old Rachel and her slow-thinking, docilely fanatic grandmother, both anticipating the imminent end of the world in ``Age of Reason.'' Mogan challenges boundaries between sanity and madness, religion and fanaticism, love and death, black and white. In two stories, ``Wade in the Water'' and ``Syzygy,'' she uses twins as physical manifestations of duality. And yet these stories never suggest a Manichaean view of the universe. The dichotomies that tumble around each other are difficult to sort out. The reader watches them shift and turn like a perpetually changing kaleidoscope, mesmerized. Every story here is perfectly round and lustrous; together they glow like a string of flawless pearls.
Pub Date: April 17, 1995
ISBN: 0-86538-082-1
Page Count: 173
Publisher: Ontario Review
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1995
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
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.
Sisters work together to solve a child-abandonment case.
Ellie and Julia Cates have never been close. Julia is shy and brainy; Ellie gets by on charm and looks. Their differences must be tossed aside when a traumatized young girl wanders in from the forest into their hometown in Washington. The sisters’ professional skills are put to the test. Julia is a world-renowned child psychologist who has lost her edge. She is reeling from a case that went publicly sour. Though she was cleared of all wrongdoing, Julia’s name was tarnished, forcing her to shutter her Beverly Hills practice. Ellie Barton is the local police chief in Rain Valley, who’s never faced a tougher case. This is her chance to prove she is more than just a fading homecoming queen, but a scarcity of clues and a reluctant victim make locating the girl’s parents nearly impossible. Ellie places an SOS call to her sister; she needs an expert to rehabilitate this wild-child who has been living outside of civilization for years. Confronted with her professional demons, Julia once again has the opportunity to display her talents and salvage her reputation. Hannah (The Things We Do for Love, 2004, etc.) is at her best when writing from the girl’s perspective. The feral wolf-child keeps the reader interested long after the other, transparent characters have grown tiresome. Hannah’s torturously over-written romance passages are stale, but there are surprises in store as the sisters set about unearthing Alice’s past and creating a home for her.
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.Pub Date: March 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-345-46752-3
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2005
© 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.
