Simple and unpretentious in its portrayal of small-town life.
Short stories explore the lives and relationships of residents of a small Minnesota town.
In 10 linked stories, seemingly simple daily interactions reach their tipping points for a wide array of characters. Stories about Ana the bartender bookend the collection, opening with her efforts to connect with patrons of her saloon despite their inconsistent presence (“Last Call”) and ending with her injured and alone in her apartment, recalling the slow loss of her brother to depression after his return from World War II and how she came to spend over 60 years working at her family’s bar (“Ana’s End”). Quiet struggles and solitude continue as themes for other characters, such as Luther, a retired teacher who, despite his budding relationship with a town librarian, is unable to move on from the long-ago death of his first love (“A Yin-Yang Year”); Shirley, the bookshop owner who lashes out at a customer in a moment of grief for her husband (“The Humming Bee”); and Eleanor, who tries to gracefully endure her sister’s funeral as mourners recall how Greta became known as “The Pee Lady” because of her public incontinence (“The Siebenbrunner Nose”). With her direct prose, author Kalz, in her first book for adults, has created a muted kaleidoscope of rural life, though the connections between stories are at times thin or slow to develop. The dialogue is sometimes hindered by wording that feels overly caricatured (“ 'Hot dog,' she said, 'it’s too cold even for the snowmen!' ”), which makes moments of reflection stand out even more: “By the time Luther came home from Marjorie’s, the rooms turned cold and close. He found himself breathing in shallow, quiet breaths, as though there wasn’t enough air left in the apartment by sundown, as though taking a deep breath might suck the walls in even farther.” Still, Kalz captures the tenacity, devotion to labor, and will to endure associated with the rural Midwest.
Simple and unpretentious in its portrayal of small-town life.Pub Date: Nov. 13, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-7322082-0-9
Page Count: 187
Publisher: Minneopa Valley Press
Review Posted Online: Aug. 20, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2018
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
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
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