In this dystopian suspense novel, a falsely imprisoned woman learns grim lessons about the new world order during her stint in a re-education camp in a postwar, matriarchal society.
This sequel to Aguila’s Women’s Work (2013) returns to a post-apocalyptic Pacific Northwest society in which a devastating war between the sexes has left women in power, and they place severe restrictions on men. This novel focuses on Rhia, a secondary character in the previous novel, who’s now tasked with delivering essential supplies to three coastal neighborhoods using her battered old boat, Betty. She goes overboard during a storm and gets rescued by two exiles, John and Carol. The trio, waylaid by Rhia’s injuries, get captured and taken to a re-education center for their alleged “transgressions.” The sickeningly sweet Miss Deacon runs the camp and seeks to transform the inmates into docile, compliant citizens. Rhia is hopeful that she’ll be released shortly and finds strength in her roommate, Ruth, whose will to resist remains unbroken. Rhia also comes to realize that the male prisoners are subject to barbaric experiments. Faced with the grim reality that she’s not getting out anytime soon, she befriends one of the male inmates and begins to hatch a plot to escape the camp and return to her boat. However, the leaders of the camp—and others—have different plans. The novel’s slow-burn plot and nuanced characters will draw in regular readers of dystopian fiction. Meanwhile, its multifaceted discussion of issues surrounding gender and power will appeal to those looking for more than just a beach read. For example, male prisoners are forced to “experience what pregnancy feels like. An expanding balloon is surgically inserted into their abdomen, and it’s filled up with saline over the next nine months.” The book works very well as a stand-alone novel, but it may be more fully appreciated in the context of its predecessor. Aguila’s depiction of this engaging world is sure to leave many readers impatient for the next installment.
A captivating story and a thought-provoking consideration of gender, systemic inequality, and the cost of willful ignorance.
Pub Date: Nov. 8, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-9911650-3-2
Page Count: 334
Publisher: Coley Press
Review Posted Online: June 2, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with...
Talk-show queen takes tumble as millions jeer.
Nora Bridges is a wildly popular radio spokesperson for family-first virtues, but her loyal listeners don't know that she walked out on her husband and teenaged daughters years ago and didn't look back. Now that a former lover has sold racy pix of naked Nora and horny himself to a national tabloid, her estranged daughter Ruby, an unsuccessful stand-up comic in Los Angeles, has been approached to pen a tell-all. Greedy for the fat fee she's been promised, Ruby agrees and heads for the San Juan Islands, eager to get reacquainted with the mom she plans to betray. Once in the family homestead, nasty Ruby alternately sulks and glares at her mother, who is temporarily wheelchair-bound as a result of a post-scandal car crash. Uncaring, Ruby begins writing her side of the story when she's not strolling on the beach with former sweetheart Dean Sloan, the son of wealthy socialites who basically ignored him and his gay brother Eric. Eric, now dying of cancer and also in a wheelchair, has returned to the island. This dismal threesome catch up on old times, recalling their childhood idylls on the island. After Ruby's perfect big sister Caroline shows up, there's another round of heartfelt talk. Nora gradually reveals the truth about her unloving husband and her late father's alcoholism, which led her to seek the approval of others at the cost of her own peace of mind. And so on. Ruby is aghast to discover that she doesn't know everything after all, but Dean offers her subdued comfort. Happy endings await almost everyone—except for readers of this nobly preachy snifflefest.
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with syrupy platitudes about life and love.Pub Date: March 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-609-60737-5
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2001
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