In the follow-up to Compton’s debut novel, Tell No Lies (2008), a formerly adulterous district attorney must defend himself in court when a 16-year-old girl wrongly accuses him of raping her.
Jack Hilliard thought he’d put the past behind him. It’s been four years since we last saw him, when he was elected St. Louis district attorney, cheated on his wife with fellow lawyer Jenny Dodson and got embroiled in a murder case as a result. But when he takes too long driving his son’s girlfriend, Celeste—who bears an uncanny resemblance to Jenny—home after she and his son come home drunk, he unwittingly opens a door to the events he’s been trying to forget. Although Jack parked by the side of the road for hours because Celeste insisted that her father would be angry if he found out she’d been drinking, Celeste accuses Jack of raping her. The accusation and resulting charges, along with Jenny’s mysterious reappearance, throw a wrench in Jack’s life. His wife grows distant, his son won’t talk to him, and he can’t quite bring himself to stay away from Jenny, even if only to help her try to figure out who has been sending her threatening letters. Nor can he figure out why Celeste is accusing him of something he didn’t do, though he suspects her father has been abusing her. Compton, a former lawyer with a sharp legal eye, is tuned into the moral ambiguities that can arise in a prosecution. Her strongest writing comes in the riveting courtroom scenes, and her understanding of her characters is equally nuanced. Readers will have a hard time not rooting for Jack, a compelling if sometimes frustrating man whose innocence is never in doubt, though his adeptness at lying to himself about his own morality and what he really wants with Jenny isn’t particularly admirable or attractive. Aside from an unrealistic climax that takes Compton away from her strengths, the absorbing story makes for a worthy sequel.
An engaging legal thriller that brings to mind the intelligence and ambiguity of The Good Wife.Pub Date: March 12, 2013
ISBN: 978-0988793224
Page Count: 344
Publisher: Fresh Fork Publishing
Review Posted Online: April 26, 2013
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Categories: GENERAL FICTION
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BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
Categories: GENERAL FICTION
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PROFILES
PERSPECTIVES
Lifelong, conflicted friendship of two women is the premise of Hannah’s maudlin latest (Magic Hour, 2006, etc.), again set in Washington State.
Tallulah “Tully” Hart, father unknown, is the daughter of a hippie, Cloud, who makes only intermittent appearances in her life. Tully takes refuge with the family of her “best friend forever,” Kate Mularkey, who compares herself unfavorably with Tully, in regards to looks and charisma. In college, “TullyandKate” pledge the same sorority and major in communications. Tully has a life goal for them both: They will become network TV anchorwomen. Tully lands an internship at KCPO-TV in Seattle and finagles a producing job for Kate. Kate no longer wishes to follow Tully into broadcasting and is more drawn to fiction writing, but she hesitates to tell her overbearing friend. Meanwhile a love triangle blooms at KCPO: Hard-bitten, irresistibly handsome, former war correspondent Johnny is clearly smitten with Tully. Expecting rejection, Kate keeps her infatuation with Johnny secret. When Tully lands a reporting job with a Today-like show, her career shifts into hyperdrive. Johnny and Kate had started an affair once Tully moved to Manhattan, and when Kate gets pregnant with daughter Marah, they marry. Kate is content as a stay-at-home mom, but frets about being Johnny’s second choice and about her unrealized writing ambitions. Tully becomes Seattle’s answer to Oprah. She hires Johnny, which spells riches for him and Kate. But Kate’s buttons are fully depressed by pitched battles over slutwear and curfews with teenaged Marah, who idolizes her godmother Tully. In an improbable twist, Tully invites Kate and Marah to resolve their differences on her show, only to blindside Kate by accusing her, on live TV, of overprotecting Marah. The BFFs are sundered. Tully’s latest attempt to salvage Cloud fails: The incorrigible, now geriatric hippie absconds once more. Just as Kate develops a spine, she’s given some devastating news. Will the friends reconcile before it’s too late?
Dated sermonizing on career versus motherhood, and conflict driven by characters’ willed helplessness, sap this tale of poignancy.Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2008
ISBN: 978-0-312-36408-3
Page Count: 496
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2007
Categories: GENERAL FICTION | FAMILY LIFE & FRIENDSHIP
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