South African Schoeman makes his American debut with a novel of high purpose—one that movingly explores that other country that for his ailing hero is both Africa and death. As stately as a Bach fugue, the novel tells the story of Versluis, a wealthy Dutchman who travels to South Africa in the 1870's in search of a cure for his tuberculosis. The long journey from the coast to Bloemfontein—then capital of the Boer republic of the Orange Free State, and noted for its healthy climate—almost kills him, but he gradually recovers over the summer. The townspeople, a cosmopolitan mix, are solicitous, but Versluis- -affected by a lonely childhood and fears of dying—rebuffs their friendship and withdraws into himself and his illness. Nonetheless, Versluis is compelled on occasion to join local society: He dines with the hospitable Hirschs, a family that exudes vitality; reads poems for a German literary society; and finds himself increasingly drawn to Pastor Scheffler and his crippled sister. The town is surrounded by empty veld—symbolic here of the emptiness of death, and of Africa itself. It's an alien place, the Pastor suggests, for Europeans torn between two worlds who, unasked, ``brought civilization and dumped it as if Africa were some kind of trash- heap''—a place ``we see only at a distance, beyond the lace- curtains.'' Scheffler's sister, born in Africa, feels no such dichotomy; for her, Europeans must become Africans. Winter comes, and Versluis realizes he is dying, but he's strangely comforted by an encounter with a fellow-countryman. On a hill overlooking the veld, Versluis can finally embrace the emptiness without fear: ``The emptiness absorbed you, the unfamiliar land grew familiar— the journey had been completed.'' One of those quietly powerful and beautifully written books that wrestles with all the great questions without ever slighting the ordinary men and women who ask them. A distinguished debut.
Pub Date: Dec. 1, 1992
ISBN: 1-85619-049-8
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Sinclair-Stevenson/Trafalgar
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1992
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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 first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.
Pub Date: July 11, 1960
ISBN: 0060935464
Page Count: 323
Publisher: Lippincott
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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