A philosophically challenging look at the inner turmoil of the American South in the 19th century.
A bildungsroman follows a troubled boy’s upbringing in a politically charged antebellum South.
Alemeth Byers grows up on a Mississippi cotton plantation owned and operated by his father, Amzi. Years ago his mother died, and the young boy pines for the acceptance of his father, but he’s an unruly sort who repeatedly makes impulsive, bad decisions. (The book opens with Alemeth furtively absconding with his father’s rifle in search of a panther he spontaneously decided to kill.) Amzi marries Eliza Strong, the neighbor’s sister and a widower as well. As a deeply religious teacher, she insists on providing an education for Alemeth, especially one grounded in Scripture. Alemeth loathes all book learning, despite a powerful curiosity, and has no patience for religion. He’s sent to be educated at Mount Sylvan and stay with the Rev. Vrooman, a man as temperamental as he is erudite. Meanwhile, the issue of slavery becomes increasingly contentious, generating a rift between Amzi and Eliza. She insists on teaching African-Americans how to read and become Christians; Amzi worries that this will only court trouble, which it does. Alemeth becomes conflicted about slavery, unsure of its defensibility, an ambivalence fomented by a friendship with a young black boy. Alemeth almost randomly pursues a career in the newspaper industry—he wanted to impress a girl—and then decides to enlist in the Confederate cause, again largely motivated by the desire to curry favor with a woman. Carvin (A Piece of the Pie, 2005, etc.) masterfully brings to life a South in dramatic transition, and he avoids the binary categories of pro and con that often typify the genre. Eliza’s character, in particular, is well-drawn in subtle hues. She’s not quite an outright abolitionist, but her Christian compassion precludes an embrace of slavery. Frustratingly, the story fails to fully bloom into a coherent plot. It reads like a chronicle of successive events, leaving the reader to wonder what thematic thread binds it all. Nonetheless, this is a thoughtful, sensitive rendering of a complex period in American history.
A philosophically challenging look at the inner turmoil of the American South in the 19th century.Pub Date: July 20, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-9768183-8-0
Page Count: -
Publisher: Ingram
Review Posted Online: March 8, 2017
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
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.
A violent surfacing of adolescence (which has little in common with Tarkington's earlier, broadly comic, Seventeen) has a compulsive impact.
"Nobody big except me" is the dream world of Holden Caulfield and his first person story is down to the basic, drab English of the pre-collegiate. For Holden is now being bounced from fancy prep, and, after a vicious evening with hall- and roommates, heads for New York to try to keep his latest failure from his parents. He tries to have a wild evening (all he does is pay the check), is terrorized by the hotel elevator man and his on-call whore, has a date with a girl he likes—and hates, sees his 10 year old sister, Phoebe. He also visits a sympathetic English teacher after trying on a drunken session, and when he keeps his date with Phoebe, who turns up with her suitcase to join him on his flight, he heads home to a hospital siege. This is tender and true, and impossible, in its picture of the old hells of young boys, the lonesomeness and tentative attempts to be mature and secure, the awful block between youth and being grown-up, the fright and sickness that humans and their behavior cause the challenging, the dramatization of the big bang. It is a sorry little worm's view of the off-beat of adult pressure, of contemporary strictures and conformity, of sentiment….
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.Pub Date: June 15, 1951
ISBN: 0316769177
Page Count: -
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1951
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
APPRECIATIONS
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