by Kathleen K. ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 2, 2011
A wild, steamy story with erudite sex-as-art undertones.
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Provocative, orgiastic snippets from a sexual voyeur’s social life.
Known for an oeuvre of titillating material, anonymous author K (Honey B., The Suite Life, 2012) explores the fascinating, visually active life of bearded, middle-aged “watcher” James Boyle O’Donahue. Irish, single and unlucky in love, O’Donahue fully embraces his penchant for voyeuristic, erotic, group events. Unapologetic to a fault, he allows himself to revel in this clandestine fetish, defensively remarking that the ones being watched are indeed willing participants—their “secret passions are not spoiled by a witness participating in the redefinition of privacy.” Armed with boundless energy, dynamic tour guide O’Donahue directs readers through a wide array of creatively themed sex clubs: Revelry, a “small luxurious pit surrounded by theater seats”; the Lunarium, a fantasy event where he accompanies an unnamed companion; and the Beach, with its taboo “Beyond the Rocks” private area that’s a “sexual potluck” starring 12 randy, experimental couples and a roomful of writhing performers at a lactating “tit talent show.” Written with verve and a contagious sense of exhibitionism, K’s first-person narrative is divided into 70 “things”: brief chapters that descriptively chart O’Donahue’s carnivalesque adventures at risqué live theater performances. Amid this plethora of vicariously thrilling and erotic “sexual fiestas,” O’Donahue takes time to philosophically ponder the nature of strippers, compares gawkers to voyeurs, gets schooled by a sex professor and breathlessly observes amazing (and not so amazing) feats of carnality. K doesn’t aim for subtlety, but as a whole, the sexual observances form an enlightening examination of voyeurism.
A wild, steamy story with erudite sex-as-art undertones.Pub Date: Nov. 2, 2011
ISBN: 978-1466233010
Page Count: 196
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: April 4, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2013
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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 J.D. Salinger ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 15, 1951
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
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