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THE HANDMAID OF DESIRE

An intermittently droll send-up of the confusions and conceits of the intelligentsia and of academic life from Stanford professor L'Heureux, author of 14 previous novels (The Shrine at Altamira, 1992, etc.). Olga Kominska, unlike most of her university colleagues, has a pretty clear mission in mind: ``Her task was to rescue some lost souls from the effects of their scandals, satisfy a few passions, answer some importunate prayers, and, on the side, to teach a little course in feminist drama and another in literary theory.'' Although her origins are never made clear, Olga's European accent gives her a certain cachet within the very hip English department of a California university struggling to remake itself into an Institute of Theory and Discourse. Olga, above such petty strife, has higher goals in mind. When Robbie Richter, who built his career on a study of the hermeneutics of The Hardy Boys, suffers what everyone hopes will be his final nervous breakdown, Olga predicts his full recovery. The general astonishment at his revival turns to widespread awe when Richter not only resumes his teaching but transforms himself into a competent scholar. A succession of apparent miracles in which Olga seemingly has a hand ensues: A barren couple conceive, a creative-writing professor completes a readable novel, and a failed socialite becomes the hostess of a successful TV talk show. Although most normal people would want to find out just who Olga is and what kind of hat she pulls her rabbits from, the academics on whom she works her magic are too removed from reality to notice that its laws are being flouted and prefer to understand her according to the categories of Foucault and Derrida—which give them less than a clue. Within a world that has banished mystery from its precincts, L'Heureux suggests, there can be no explanations. Witty and sharp, but not nasty enough for satisfying satire and too far-fetched for comedy. An in-house joke that won't play off campus.

Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1996

ISBN: 1-56947-073-1

Page Count: 272

Publisher: Soho

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1996

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A LITTLE LIFE

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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TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD

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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