by Kevin Fox ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 14, 2012
Given a journal belonging to an uncle he never knew existed, Sean Corrigan embarks on a quest across the Atlantic—and lifetimes—in search of the truth about Michael Corrigan, a cop accused of murder who fled to Ireland.
Sean falls in with his Irish family, who are privy to an ancient knowledge: that reincarnation is real and, while most of us don’t remember past lives, some, by taking belladonna and reaching a hallucinatory state close to death, can remember their former lives. Sean soon learns he is part of a karmic cycle in which bloodshed begets bloodshed and some mysterious debt needs to be repaid. The action shuttles between Sean’s narrative and that of his uncle Michael, whose flight from an almost certain murder conviction takes him to the Corrigan family’s ancestral land. Both experience uncanny bursts of insight and familiarity—e.g., understanding and speaking Gaelic despite never having learned the language. Michael realizes that his father, whose idea it was that he visit Ireland, has used him as a mule to smuggle cash to persons sympathetic with the Provisional Irish Republican Army. Both Sean and Michael fall for beguiling Irish lasses: Sean for his cousin (not by blood) Anne, and Michael for Kate Ryan, who tends the counter at a grocery store he happens upon. Soon enough, both become embroiled in ancient animosities and conflicts, encountering enemies English and Irish. This intertwining, transgenerational epic of romance and revenge never overcomes its protagonists’ naiveté, especially Sean’s, whose every paragraph ends in a series of questions illustrating his confusion at what is immediately obvious to the reader. As he seeks pages missing from the journal, Sean spouts trite observations on Irish culture and quasi-philosophical digressions on the implications of reincarnation as Anne clues him in to how this secret knowledge has been encoded in the parables and mythologies of the major religions. Michael’s narrative of being caught in the bloody struggle between members of the Provisional IRA, the British and with one another is more compelling. Unfortunately, weak writing and crepe-thin characters, as well as unnecessary redundancy between the dual narratives and uninteresting denouements make for an unrewarding read. A potentially good idea lacking adequate execution.
Pub Date: Feb. 14, 2012
ISBN: 978-1-56512-933-1
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Algonquin
Review Posted Online: Dec. 14, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2012
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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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