by Karen Schiff ‧ RELEASE DATE: Dec. 16, 2014
A somewhat contrived but entertaining satire on the different ways of being right.
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In this droll comedy of manners, sparks fly over a prospective union of two very different conservative families.
When Amanda Worthington brings her latest boyfriend du jour, Brian Grace, home from college, her wealthy, Republican parents, Chuck and Libby, figure that her relationship with the earnest, hunky football player won’t last long. However, a tizzy erupts when Amanda announces that she’s pregnant and plans to marry Brian the next day. Brian is also a Republican, but to the worldly, fashionable, and socially liberal Worthingtons, he’s the wrong kind—a devout Christian who insists that abortion is out of the question and marriage is mandatory. Even worse, he comes from a down-at-the-heels, working-class family. As Chuck strategizes a way to use his money to quash both the wedding and the pregnancy, Libby reels at her ruined plans to make Amanda into an accomplished doctor. The arrival of Brian’s parents intensifies the clash: the Worthingtons are appalled by the Graces’ dowdy clothes, untoned physiques, zealous religiosity, and concealed firearm; the Graces, meanwhile, are scandalized by the Worthingtons’ arctic-white décor, nude statuary, gay chef, and disdain for biblical strictures. As the two families learn more about what divides them, their awkwardness shades toward open enmity—just in time for dinner. Schiff has adapted her novel from her play of the same name, and this fact shows in a certain staginess: the story takes place in a single afternoon and location, the dialogue telegraphs attitudes in efficient shorthand (“do you think he’s one of those…one of those Christians?”), the political schema is somewhat self-conscious, and the characters are stark enough to be legible from the back row. However, Schiff fleshes out these caricatures with plausible interior lives and unexpected nuances; Libby emerges as more than the shallow shopaholic she initially seems to be, and the Graces turn out to be at least as cosmopolitan and socially fluent as the Worthingtons, in their own way. Overall, Schiff’s well-paced prose style combines whip-smart repartée with a sharp, funny knack for social observation, and she manages to infuse psychological depth and emotional resonance into the kulturkampf.
A somewhat contrived but entertaining satire on the different ways of being right.Pub Date: Dec. 16, 2014
ISBN: 978-1505332179
Page Count: 170
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: March 19, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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by Karen Schiff
by Hanya Yanagihara ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 10, 2015
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
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by Harper Lee ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 11, 1960
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
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