This latest from bestselling Gould (The Best Is Yet to Come, 2002, etc.) is—well, indescribable.
A mother’s little ghostwriter digs up family secrets galore.
Tracey Sullivan, peppy research assistant for a Miami TV newsroom, has big dreams of writing bestsellers, but not much spare time. She’s gotta work for a living, even though she has a rich boyfriend. Brian Rutherford Biggs III is fun, virile, and unbelievably good-looking, with the “swept-back profile of an aerodynamically-designed hood ornament.” And he just bought a killer boat, with “aerodynamic Euro-styling and a swept-back radar arch.” Brian’s one cool breeze, all right, though down-to-earth Tracey wonders if he’ll ever introduce her to his parents. Meantime, there’s sex and booze. But does this book have a plot? It certainly does. And it revolves around the as-yet-unwritten memoirs of bitchy B-movie star Urania Vickers, who hasn’t delivered the promised manuscript to Greenleaf Books, a publisher recently been absorbed by one of those hydra-headed, multinational conglomerates that doesn’t give a whistle about authors or fine literature. Just the bottom line. Heartless bastards! The plot thickens faster than stale tapioca in the Floribbean sun: Tracey has to pay the mortgages on her father’s property after his mysterious suicide, and a subsidiary of her boyfriend’s financial empire is calling in the notes. Really heartless bastards! Poking around in Dad’s papers reveals a mysterious family link to Urania—can this washed-up movie star actually be her mother? Tracey jumps at the offer of big bucks to ghostwrite Urania’s book-to-be. Trailing after the bejeweled movie star to innumerable glamorous international locales oughta be a blast. And maybe, just maybe, mommy will love Tracey again. But not so fast. There was an identical twin sister, brain-damaged in an accident, who pretended to be Urania and caused no end of trouble. Not even being shut up in the tower of Urania’s villa on Santorini has cured her. Gee whiz! Which twin is which? Will Tracey’s real mother please stand up?
This latest from bestselling Gould (The Best Is Yet to Come, 2002, etc.) is—well, indescribable.Pub Date: Oct. 7, 2003
ISBN: 0-451-21047-6
Page Count: 352
Publisher: NAL/Berkley
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2003
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
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The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with...
Talk-show queen takes tumble as millions jeer.
Nora Bridges is a wildly popular radio spokesperson for family-first virtues, but her loyal listeners don't know that she walked out on her husband and teenaged daughters years ago and didn't look back. Now that a former lover has sold racy pix of naked Nora and horny himself to a national tabloid, her estranged daughter Ruby, an unsuccessful stand-up comic in Los Angeles, has been approached to pen a tell-all. Greedy for the fat fee she's been promised, Ruby agrees and heads for the San Juan Islands, eager to get reacquainted with the mom she plans to betray. Once in the family homestead, nasty Ruby alternately sulks and glares at her mother, who is temporarily wheelchair-bound as a result of a post-scandal car crash. Uncaring, Ruby begins writing her side of the story when she's not strolling on the beach with former sweetheart Dean Sloan, the son of wealthy socialites who basically ignored him and his gay brother Eric. Eric, now dying of cancer and also in a wheelchair, has returned to the island. This dismal threesome catch up on old times, recalling their childhood idylls on the island. After Ruby's perfect big sister Caroline shows up, there's another round of heartfelt talk. Nora gradually reveals the truth about her unloving husband and her late father's alcoholism, which led her to seek the approval of others at the cost of her own peace of mind. And so on. Ruby is aghast to discover that she doesn't know everything after all, but Dean offers her subdued comfort. Happy endings await almost everyone—except for readers of this nobly preachy snifflefest.
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with syrupy platitudes about life and love.Pub Date: March 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-609-60737-5
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2001
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