by Jim Harrison ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 1, 1998
There is in all of Harrison’s (Julip, 1994, etc.) work an almost pagan celebration of lives spent close to the land, and of the necessary round of life and death. That awareness, and acceptance, are at the heart of this portrait of three generations of a Nebraska family. The patriarch, John Northridge, is the son of a Native American woman and a white man, and much of his life has been shaped by the struggle to come to grips with his fragmented heritage. As a young man, he entertains the idea of becoming a painter, and in doing so escaping from the conflicted loyalties of his childhood. Instead, he becomes a successful, if somewhat ruthless, rancher. The novel consists of a series of first-person narratives, beginning with John’s retrospective memoir of his life, a particularly effective section in its mix of harsh honesty and in its lack of brooding guilt. By contrast, the other family members who narrate are all shadowed by it. Paul, John’s son, has been haunted by the fact that he’s survived to inherit the Northridge ranch while his brother, John’s favorite, died in a hero in Korea. He left behind a child, Dalva, now a bright, loving, rebellious young woman. She in turn has been scarred ever since, at the age of 15, she gave birth to a son who was immediately given up for adoption. Her son, Nelse, 30, has set out to find his birth mother, and their excited discovery of each other is explored at some length. Dalva is now dying, and the last and most powerful section follows her final days as she struggles stoically to come to terms with her life and to choose the way in which she leaves it. A vivid meditation on the defining power of the family, and of the kind of redemption offered by an awareness of nature’s rather pitiless beauty. (First printing of 75,000; $100,000 ad/promo; author tour)
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1998
ISBN: 0-87113-724-0
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Atlantic Monthly
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1998
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by Hanya Yanagihara ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 10, 2015
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.
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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
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by Harper Lee ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 11, 1960
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
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