Flagrant overwriting, derivative plotting: a swashbuckler indeed.
Once again, the prolific Newcomb (coauthor: The Ghosts of Elkhorn, 1982, etc.) rounds up black-hearted villains, lionhearted heroes, and bosomy beauties for his 30-plus action-adventure tale.
It’s 1665, and young Henry Morgan is enslaved in Cuba, wicked Spaniards having carted him off, a mere child, from his native Wales. But he’s now 19, and someone certainly should have known better than to guard only lightly this future scourge of Spanish shipping—or to guard him heavily, for that matter, since it’s clear from the get-go that Henry is the stuff of superheroes, seldom to be fettered by ordinary restraints. So escape he does—in a manner sort of sluffed over by the author—in the process killing some Spaniards, stealing their ship, freeing a passel of pirates, then setting off with them as his unswervingly loyal crew. In due time he becomes “El Tigre de Caribe,” feared up and down the Caribbean—with certain notable exceptions, such as the lovely if tomboyish Nell Jolly, daughter of Morgan’s éminence gris. “Toto” (the Tiger’s pet name for her) adores him. To her considerable dismay, however, she discovers she’s not the only one. The aristocratic Elena Maria de Saucedo—she of the “perfect breasts,” “raven black” hair, “lustrous green eyes,” and “come-hither smile”—is also smitten. Highborn she may be, but trustworthy she’s not, as Henry discovers to his cost when she betrays him to the Dons. They throw him into their slammer, though not for long, of course. Before one can say “brethren of the blood,” he’s freebooting again—sacking Panama City, getting rich, undoing his enemies, marrying his sweetie, and making full sail back to Britain to become a knight of the realm.
Flagrant overwriting, derivative plotting: a swashbuckler indeed.Pub Date: Aug. 18, 2000
ISBN: 0-312-26197-7
Page Count: 288
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2000
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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