British-born Morley (The Case of Thomas N., 1987) fails to put Munich on the literary map in a pretentious second novel that makes the city the heart of a heavily symbolic structure, as creaky as the scenery for Munich's famed carnival balls. Beginning on September 23, the day that marks the autumnal equinox, and ending on March 20, the first day of spring, the story uses the great festivals of the old pagan and Christian calendars as milestones to advance the plot—a plot that seems to have been hatched up mostly to demonstrate that this is indeed a novel, rather than the Rabelaisian travelogue for tourists with special tastes it so often seems. The two strands, mythic and religious, are represented by sisters Stephanie (pagan) and Martha (Christian). Beautiful Stephanie, the story's contemporary Persephone, mysteriously disappears on the day she marries artist Brum and does not reappear until spring. It turns out she has moved in with gloomy but rich Max, the CEO (in a turn of breathtakingly obvious symbolism) of a funeral home conglomerate. Martha, the devout sister, is pregnant and, though married, uncertain of the baby's paternity, a fact that segues neatly into the Christmas Day birth of her twins. As the leaves fall, the seasons turn, the sun enters Scorpio, saints' days come and go, and the city enjoys its traditional and lubricious Oktoberfests, Christmas revels, and pre- Lenten carnivals (the actual Feast of Fools), Brum struggles to understand why Stephanie left him. Minor characters find love, Martha finally lets long-suffering husband Hieronymus enter her ``cone of light,'' and as the Sun rises higher in the sky, snows melt, and Stephanie returns in time for Spring. Life in quaint, naughty Munich can go on...and on. A wannabe big novel that has its moments—the writing is often vivid—but they're not enough. Beer with too much head.
Pub Date: Jan. 20, 1995
ISBN: 0-312-11786-8
Page Count: 464
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 1994
BOOK REVIEW
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.
A violent surfacing of adolescence (which has little in common with Tarkington's earlier, broadly comic, Seventeen) has a compulsive impact.
"Nobody big except me" is the dream world of Holden Caulfield and his first person story is down to the basic, drab English of the pre-collegiate. For Holden is now being bounced from fancy prep, and, after a vicious evening with hall- and roommates, heads for New York to try to keep his latest failure from his parents. He tries to have a wild evening (all he does is pay the check), is terrorized by the hotel elevator man and his on-call whore, has a date with a girl he likes—and hates, sees his 10 year old sister, Phoebe. He also visits a sympathetic English teacher after trying on a drunken session, and when he keeps his date with Phoebe, who turns up with her suitcase to join him on his flight, he heads home to a hospital siege. This is tender and true, and impossible, in its picture of the old hells of young boys, the lonesomeness and tentative attempts to be mature and secure, the awful block between youth and being grown-up, the fright and sickness that humans and their behavior cause the challenging, the dramatization of the big bang. It is a sorry little worm's view of the off-beat of adult pressure, of contemporary strictures and conformity, of sentiment….
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.Pub Date: June 15, 1951
ISBN: 0316769177
Page Count: -
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1951
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
APPRECIATIONS
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
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