Readers will be inspired by this novel’s hapless hero and his relatable quest to understand his mistakes and change his...
In Lange’s debut novel, a recovering cancer patient finds inspiration in Sufi poetry and New Age spirituality as he searches for true love.
James Wilder, a divorced father of two, is undergoing alternative treatments for prostate cancer at a center where he meets a mysterious beauty named Willow Leaf; they reconnect later at a Boulder, Colorado, ashram. She’s one of seven women with whom he falls in love, but each has a secret that tears the relationship apart. In Willow’s case, it’s a fiancé whom she’s unwilling to leave. James’ old friend Kat inspires him to love again, but this realization occurs at the worst possible time. Later, he meets Charlotte, who, like him, is playing the field after her divorce. This is followed by a connection with Saraswati “Sara” Stowe, his yoga instructor, who needs time before starting a new relationship—but not for the reason he thinks. In Bali, James inspires Londoner Nabila Khan with his poetry, but her rich ex-husband stalks them with his bodyguards. Finally, at a San Diego conference, James meets Angie, an astrologer, and Malena, a certified nursing assistant, and one of them changes the course of his life. In a clever framing device, James memorializes each relationship with a mala, a garland of beads used for prayer; the chapter names mostly correspond to stones within the mala, such as amazonite or lapis lazuli—but later, James strives to build a different, “better mala.” Sprinkled throughout are unrhymed poems inspired by Sufi poets Rumi and Hafiz, of which “A Rude Guest,” personifying love, is a highlight. Although the failed relationships dominate the story, Lange effectively devotes much of the narrative to James’ self-reflection, as when he describes his rescue dog, Rocco, “as a consolation prize for the kids when divorce split their world into two lesser halves.” Just when all hope seems lost, the author brings key plot points together that force his protagonist to look at aspects of his life through a different lens, bringing the story to a dramatic, heartwarming conclusion.
Readers will be inspired by this novel’s hapless hero and his relatable quest to understand his mistakes and change his destiny.Pub Date: Nov. 23, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-73247-300-3
Page Count: 455
Publisher: Arjuna Press
Review Posted Online: Feb. 21, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
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
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