A sweeping, ultimately dizzying saga about a painter and her multiple marriages.
A Boston debutante becomes an artist in Europe, experiencing love and loss, in this debut historical novel.
In 1953, Peter Wells discovers that painter Maude Driscoll is the subject of a John Singer Sargent portrait spotted in a Washington, D.C., showroom. Noting to the clerk that he has “more than an artist collector connection” with Driscoll, Wells wonders, based on portrait details, “How in blazes did she get presented to Queen Victoria?” The novel then shifts to Boston, 1889. Driscoll just misses seeing off her best friend, Lillie Doty, who’s moving with her struggling family to California. The more affluent Driscoll soon attends Wellesley, with her British roommate eventually taking her to London (and that court presentation). Staying on to paint in Paris, Driscoll embarks on an affair with her roommate’s brother, who’s killed just as she learns that she is pregnant. Driscoll gives up her son for adoption and continues painting. At the outbreak of World War I, she returns to the United States for a brief marriage that turns out to be a sham and then relocates to Italy, where she eventually meets, then marries, another American. She resides in Washington for a spell and then returns full-time to Italy upon her husband’s death. She next marries an Italian baron and deals with the Nazi occupation. Throughout, Doty writes letters to Driscoll and then her own daughter, Evie. The back story of Wells, who first meets Driscoll in Paris in 1918 and marries Evie in the World War II era, is also unspooled. Fabris opens this novel with great flair, with that beckoning portrait and the touching heartbreak of girlfriends from different classes torn apart. Unfortunately, plot overload soon ensues, given that Driscoll marries many men, Doty writes a lot of missives (relating a rather humdrum life), and Wells has an array of highly fortuitous encounters (meeting not only Driscoll and Evie, but also saving Doty’s brother while a soldier in Europe). While the narrative always remains enjoyable, its key characters, particularly Driscoll, become engulfed rather than illuminated by this surfeit of details.
A sweeping, ultimately dizzying saga about a painter and her multiple marriages.Pub Date: Oct. 19, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-9968437-2-0
Page Count: 410
Publisher: A Vegas Publisher, LLC
Review Posted Online: March 14, 2016
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
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.
Sisters work together to solve a child-abandonment case.
Ellie and Julia Cates have never been close. Julia is shy and brainy; Ellie gets by on charm and looks. Their differences must be tossed aside when a traumatized young girl wanders in from the forest into their hometown in Washington. The sisters’ professional skills are put to the test. Julia is a world-renowned child psychologist who has lost her edge. She is reeling from a case that went publicly sour. Though she was cleared of all wrongdoing, Julia’s name was tarnished, forcing her to shutter her Beverly Hills practice. Ellie Barton is the local police chief in Rain Valley, who’s never faced a tougher case. This is her chance to prove she is more than just a fading homecoming queen, but a scarcity of clues and a reluctant victim make locating the girl’s parents nearly impossible. Ellie places an SOS call to her sister; she needs an expert to rehabilitate this wild-child who has been living outside of civilization for years. Confronted with her professional demons, Julia once again has the opportunity to display her talents and salvage her reputation. Hannah (The Things We Do for Love, 2004, etc.) is at her best when writing from the girl’s perspective. The feral wolf-child keeps the reader interested long after the other, transparent characters have grown tiresome. Hannah’s torturously over-written romance passages are stale, but there are surprises in store as the sisters set about unearthing Alice’s past and creating a home for her.
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.Pub Date: March 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-345-46752-3
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2005
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