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THE EVENT

The mind's freedom to invent and reshape reality is blunted by the dead weight of materialismin this sluggish metaphysical fantasy by the Argentine-born author of Nobody Nothing Never (1994), etc. In 1855, a Maltese-Italian magician and telepathist, Bianco, is exposed as a fake by a ``positivist cabal'' and forced to flee to the Argentine pampas. Endeavoring to become rich and reclaim his honor, Bianco condescends to involve himself with such material entities as building bricks, wire fencing, a cattle-wealthy doctor (Garay L¢pez), who agrees to become his business partner, and the beautiful young woman (Gina), initially involved with the doctor, who consents (for reasons not clearly revealed) to marry Bianco and assist his ongoing ``experiments in telepathic communication.'' The real world obtrudes upon this dreamer's hermetic sensibility in such forms as Gina's pregnancy, the contentious avarice that disfigures Garay L¢pez's privileged family, and a climactic outbreak of yellow fever. Bianco's preference for the world inside his own head finds expression in tediously reiterated (and seemingly arbitrary) abstractions, permitting the confused reader respite only when the focus shifts away from Saer's self-absorbed protagonist. The novel's pessimism is far more successfully incarnated in Gary L¢pez's urbane ``theatrical allegory...The Magi,'' an unwritten work whose deadpan premise is that no Christ child ever gets born in Bethlehem after all and life there goes on pretty much as usual. Saer's own novel, being about as uneventful as any can be, could use more of such subversive witand greater development of a fascinating subplot in which a half-breed deserter from the army fathers a large family, rapes his daughters, is murdered by his eldest son, and leaves among his survivors a mute, traumatized boy who somehow metamorphoses into a verse-speaking prophet. Here was the novel Saer didn't write. Only in such brief sequences does this soporific treatise shake itself awake and assume the welcome contours of living and breathing fiction.

Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1995

ISBN: 1-85242-249-1

Page Count: 224

Publisher: Serpent’s Tail

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1995

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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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THE THINGS WE DO FOR LOVE

Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.

Life lessons.

Angie Malone, the youngest of a big, warm Italian-American family, returns to her Pacific Northwest hometown to wrestle with various midlife disappointments: her divorce, Papa’s death, a downturn in business at the family restaurant, and, above all, her childlessness. After several miscarriages, she, a successful ad exec, and husband Conlan, a reporter, befriended a pregnant young girl and planned to adopt her baby—and then the birth mother changed her mind. Angie and Conlan drifted apart and soon found they just didn’t love each other anymore. Metaphorically speaking, “her need for a child had been a high tide, an overwhelming force that drowned them. A year ago, she could have kicked to the surface but not now.” Sadder but wiser, Angie goes to work in the struggling family restaurant, bickering with Mama over updating the menu and replacing the ancient waitress. Soon, Angie befriends another young girl, Lauren Ribido, who’s eager to learn and desperately needs a job. Lauren’s family lives on the wrong side of the tracks, and her mother is a promiscuous alcoholic, but Angie knows nothing of this sad story and welcomes Lauren into the DeSaria family circle. The girl listens in, wide-eyed, as the sisters argue and make wisecracks and—gee-whiz—are actually nice to each other. Nothing at all like her relationship with her sluttish mother, who throws Lauren out when boyfriend David, en route to Stanford, gets her pregnant. Will Lauren, who’s just been accepted to USC, let Angie adopt her baby? Well, a bit of a twist at the end keeps things from becoming too predictable.

Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.

Pub Date: July 1, 2004

ISBN: 0-345-46750-7

Page Count: 400

Publisher: Ballantine

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2004

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