Unparalleled in voice yet a bit lost in the big room of the novel—as if its pieces were looking for corners to hide in,...
Hecht’s first novel, after her glorious stories (Do the Windows Open?, 1997), is both treat and trial for lovers of her earlier fiction.
Here is the same voice as before, of the smartly independent but neurasthenic (unhappy and in analysis forever) narrator who summers in Nantucket and is so wonderfully opinionated about Americans and their society as to raise the ghost of Mencken, chortling delightedly (who else writing today would say, or be able to say, that “I [gave] up socializing with the dull, and then had to give up socializing altogether”?). For those whose brains are still alert with skepticism in this drugged and latter-day age, the voice is tough, spiky, funny, and refreshing—even if its possessor is “a hollowed-out woman without a soul” and does fixate on “emptiness and nothingness.” It’s a voice honest, rigorous, and engaging—but Hecht’s novel just doesn’t provide it with a story that can come up to its level. Here again appears “the world renowned reproductive surgeon” Arnold Loquesto, cold and dour. Now, it’s his college-age son the narrator is friends with, having met him years earlier and still in an intense telephone friendship with him. The two are wonderfully simpatico, and the usual Hechtian sparks fly as they converse and complain (“His whole life, I realized, was made up of these last two crummy decades. No wonder he was cynical and discouraged . . .”) about everything from dumb song titles to aging hippies who wear gray-hair ponytails. The crux is that the boy, raised by dysfunctional parents in a dysfunctional age, is actually a heroine addict—and that, as a result, something dreadful happens. If only the reader could feel for the boy even a quarter of the intensity the narrator does, there’d be weight galore to go with all this wit—but the book tacks without ballast to its half-lost ending.
Unparalleled in voice yet a bit lost in the big room of the novel—as if its pieces were looking for corners to hide in, brilliantly. (For an excerpt of The Unprofessionals go to www.kirkusreviews.com.)Pub Date: Sept. 9, 2003
ISBN: 1-4000-6174-1
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 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
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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