Arielle’s story will resonate with readers—particularly women of a certain age—eager to will her to leave her bastard...
A painfully honest, moving family saga—and first novel—by sculptor, professor, and multigenre author Peck (Sculpture as Experience, 2007).
Tracing the relationship of Arielle Fischer and Stuart Brockman from their first meeting in 1968 through courtship, marriage, parenthood and, ultimately, death, Peck offers a candid portrayal of the challenges encountered by a successful professional woman balancing work, marriage and motherhood. Although Arielle’s parents and sister support her juggling act, her husband—struggling with mental health issues and jealousy of her success—and his family seem to only blame Arielle for all that goes wrong, without recognizing all that she does right. Many readers will be baffled by Arielle not heeding her initial impression of Stuart on their disastrous first date. Not only does she continue to see and, eventually, marry the troubled and troubling Stuart, but she remains married to him when most women would have left. Stranger still, she believes she loves him. The disturbing trek through nearly 30 years of the Brockmans’ lives together should be depressing, but Arielle’s eternal optimism (Stuart calls her his “light”) and no-nonsense attitude prevent the book from being too dark. Arielle copes with not only Stuart’s but their children’s bad decisions and the turmoil they create—all of which Stuart blames on Arielle because he apparently had no role in their upbringing. Upsetting subject matter aside, the novel is a touching, no-holds-barred depiction of a dysfunctional family on the brink of brokenness. Peck proves herself to be as much an artist with words as she is with other media. Stuart’s description of Arielle’s luminosity is spot-on, although she reveals a curiously shallow depth of introspection, despite the fact that the book is written in first person. Arielle never really questions her own decisions or shows much pain in the face of the cruelty she suffers at the hands of the others.
Arielle’s story will resonate with readers—particularly women of a certain age—eager to will her to leave her bastard husband.Pub Date: Jan. 2, 2012
ISBN: 978-1600476426
Page Count: 438
Publisher: Wasteland Press
Review Posted Online: May 14, 2012
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.
Coelho is a Brazilian writer with four books to his credit. Following Diary of a Magus (1992—not reviewed) came this book, published in Brazil in 1988: it's an interdenominational, transcendental, inspirational fable—in other words, a bag of wind.
The story is about a youth empowered to follow his dream. Santiago is an Andalusian shepherd boy who learns through a dream of a treasure in the Egyptian pyramids. An old man, the king of Salem, the first of various spiritual guides, tells the boy that he has discovered his destiny: "to realize one's destiny is a person's only real obligation." So Santiago sells his sheep, sails to Tangier, is tricked out of his money, regains it through hard work, crosses the desert with a caravan, stops at an oasis long enough to fall in love, escapes from warring tribesmen by performing a miracle, reaches the pyramids, and eventually gets both the gold and the girl. Along the way he meets an Englishman who describes the Soul of the World; the desert woman Fatima, who teaches him the Language of the World; and an alchemist who says, "Listen to your heart" A message clings like ivy to every encounter; everyone, but everyone, has to put in their two cents' worth, from the crystal merchant to the camel driver ("concentrate always on the present, you'll be a happy man"). The absence of characterization and overall blandness suggest authorship by a committee of self-improvement pundits—a far cry from Saint- Exupery's The Little Prince: that flagship of the genre was a genuine charmer because it clearly derived from a quirky, individual sensibility.
Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.Pub Date: July 1, 1993
ISBN: 0-06-250217-4
Page Count: 192
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1993
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
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
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