A poignant, delightful take on morality, friendship, growing older and the legal profession.
In this exquisitely stripped-down novel from Massachusetts attorney Behar (Hoops, 2002), a group of six over-the-hill lawyers swaps case stories over breakfast at the titular greasy spoon.
Every Sunday, Carpenter (the reader never learns his first name) meets fellow attorneys Delaney, Fish, Morton, Steinberg and Weiskoff for coffee, eggs and a sizable helping of good conversation at the same two tables pushed together near the front window of Ed’s Breakfast Emporium. Prickly proprietor Ed has dubbed the group of regulars the “Barristers,” while the men have affectionately adopted the name for their end-of-the-week ritual. Told through a series of vignettes, the novel limns a handful of these breakfasts over the course of five summers as the group discusses politics, the Red Sox and cases on which they have recently toiled—with names judiciously changed, of course. The cases discussed range from heartbreaking ones of broken families without happy endings to more unusual fare, including one involving two Wiccans, a love spell and a restraining order. While the cases may differ, the breakfasts play out with a careful repetitiveness that deliciously captures the routine of everyday life. Weiskoff is always good for an out-of-the-blue comment. Delaney hardly ever fails at steering the conversation back on track. Ed can be relied upon to drop in on the middle of a story, orders in hand, and inject a stinging dose of blue-collar criticism into the white-collar chitchat. It’s not hard to imagine running into these aging, overweight and admittedly unextraordinary characters in real life, yet they remain completely absorbing. Between the witty zingers and moments of lightheartedness, the Barristers each struggle with bouts of dissatisfaction, uncertain about their present lots in life, and readers can’t help but relate.
A poignant, delightful take on morality, friendship, growing older and the legal profession.Pub Date: Feb. 7, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-4923-1872-9
Page Count: 478
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: April 24, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2014
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
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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