Morley (The Feast of Fools, Jan. 1995, etc.) takes us on an evening's ramble through the dim Amsterdam backstreetsa ramble leading slowly up to the revelation of a troubled family's unhappy historyin this quietly powerful work. As the hero (of sorts), Kiddo cuts a strangely familiar figure: A college dropout who lives on welfare and squats in a derelict building in an old part of Amsterdam, he seems, in his spoiled-brat rebelliousness, to embody all the pretensions of a certain class of overindulged, intellectual children. ``As an inhabitant of a perfectly level country, without even the faintest rise of an expectation on my horizon...I've been cultivating the art of Now, making notes towards a new definition of hope, that is, of hopelessness.'' And how: Bitterly angry at his parents for their decision to divorce and send him (at 13) to Boston to live with his mother, Kiddo hied back to Amsterdam at the first opportunity and threw himself into the faux-nihilist scene that European counterculture can offer young American expats. Partly, it seems, he was reacting against the example of his older brother, Morton, the straight-arrow genius who stayed with Dad and sailed through his university studies only to die of cancer in his early 20s. Most of story here is a recollectionnot so much an elegy as a reconstructionand Rembrandt's painting, The Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Tulp, becomes the central image in Kiddo's attempt to settle in his own mind just what manner of man his brother waseven to the point of witnessing his autopsy. But the insight that's achieved is cumulativea slow piecing together of fragmented information and memory. And Morley wisely resists forcing Kiddo into any kind of pat transformation once he learns some of the darker aspects of his brother's life. The ambiguity at this close strikes just the right note. Haunting and evocative: a work of intense feeling and masterful restraint.
Pub Date: Sept. 8, 1995
ISBN: 0-312-13426-6
Page Count: 192
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1995
BOOK REVIEW
Not as thematically ambitious as Whitehead’s earlier work, but a whole lot of fun to read.
Another surprise from an author who never writes the same novel twice.
Though Whitehead has earned considerable critical acclaim for his earlier work—in particular his debut (The Intuitionist, 1999) and its successor (John Henry Days, 2001)—he’ll likely reach a wider readership with his warmest novel to date. Funniest as well, though there have been flashes of humor throughout his writing. The author blurs the line between fiction and memoir as he recounts the coming-of-age summer of 15-year-old Benji Cooper in the family’s summer retreat of New York’s Sag Harbor. “According to the world, we were the definition of paradox: black boys with beach houses,” writes Whitehead. Caucasians are only an occasional curiosity within this idyll, and parents are mostly absent as well. Each chapter is pretty much a self-contained entity, corresponding to a rite of passage: getting the first job, negotiating the mysteries of the opposite sex. There’s an accident with a BB gun and plenty of episodes of convincing someone older to buy beer, but not much really happens during this particular summer. Yet by the end of it, Benji is well on his way to becoming Ben, and he realizes that he is a different person than when the summer started. He also realizes that this time in his life will eventually live only in memory. There might be some distinctions between Benji and Whitehead, though the novelist also spent his youthful summers in Sag Harbor and was the same age as Benji in 1985, when the novel is set. Yet the first-person narrator has the novelist’s eye for detail, craft of character development and analytical instincts for sharp social commentary.
Not as thematically ambitious as Whitehead’s earlier work, but a whole lot of fun to read.Pub Date: April 28, 2009
ISBN: 978-0-385-52765-1
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2009
BOOK TO SCREEN
Anyone who believes in true love or is simply willing to accept it as the premise of a winding tale will find this debut an...
True love flares between two people, but they find that circumstances always impede it.
On a winter day in London, Laurie spots Jack from her bus home and he sparks a feeling in her so deep that she spends the next year searching for him. Her roommate and best friend, Sarah, is the perfect wing-woman but ultimately—and unknowingly—ends the search by finding Jack and falling for him herself. Laurie’s hasty decision not to tell Sarah is the second painful missed opportunity (after not getting off the bus), but Sarah’s happiness is so important to Laurie that she dedicates ample energy into retraining her heart not to love Jack. Laurie is misguided, but her effort and loyalty spring from a true heart, and she considers her project mostly successful. Perhaps she would have total success, but the fact of the matter is that Jack feels the same deep connection to Laurie. His reasons for not acting on them are less admirable: He likes Sarah and she’s the total package; why would he give that up just because every time he and Laurie have enough time together (and just enough alcohol) they nearly fall into each other’s arms? Laurie finally begins to move on, creating a mostly satisfying life for herself, whereas Jack’s inability to be genuine tortures him and turns him into an ever bigger jerk. Patriarchy—it hurts men, too! There’s no question where the book is going, but the pacing is just right, the tone warm, and the characters sympathetic, even when making dumb decisions.
Anyone who believes in true love or is simply willing to accept it as the premise of a winding tale will find this debut an emotional, satisfying read.Pub Date: Oct. 16, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-525-57468-2
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: July 30, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
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