A propulsive action tale augmented with worthwhile character development.
A debut novel offers a prison thriller leavened with Christian philosophy.
At the heart of this tale is Livvy Fischer. Poor Livvy, a young Christian and an opera singer, is finally coming to terms with the suicide of her stalker, Wade. Since Wade immolated himself in front of her at a recital, she hasn't been able to sing publicly again. But she has resumed working at a local coffee shop, where she has become infatuated with a cute customer, Lucas. When Lucas finds out Livvy sings, he invites her to participate in his church’s Christmas program. Livvy attends a meeting about the event and discovers that Lucas is actually a pastor at the church. She also allows herself to be talked into taking part in an outreach program at San Quentin prison to spend more time with Lucas: “Three hours round-trip with Lucas—that was part of the deal. The compensation.” This proves to be an unfortunate choice, as a riot breaks out right after the church singers and a prison devotional group gather in San Quentin’s chapel. Livvy is soon on the run with Tobin, a born-again prisoner who is trying to keep her safe from Gant, a serial killer whose victims are petite blondes like her. And Lucas is the prisoner of Gant, who is trying to beat information about Livvy out of him. Throughout the narrative, Vorreiter has the Christian characters, such as Lucas, drawing solace from the Word of God: “Lord, I know that you are in charge even though it doesn’t look like it. Please give me wisdom and courage. Shelter us, protect us.” Still the Christian philosophy doesn’t distract from the fast-paced plot. The author turns San Quentin into a character, graphically changing it into a foreboding setting for the civilians stranded there. She challenges the concept of who is a good guy and who a bad guy, as some of the prisoners aid the church group members caught inside. Vorreiter has created characters that readers should care about, regardless of their backgrounds. She transforms a prison into a place where Livvy, Tobin, Lucas, and others are born again, learning better ways to cope with their lives.
A propulsive action tale augmented with worthwhile character development.Pub Date: Dec. 24, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-9985253-0-3
Page Count: 342
Publisher: Cross & Dot Editorial and Publishing Services
Review Posted Online: March 30, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 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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