After winning the Booker Prixe for his last novel, an inspired satire on aging adulterers (The Old Devils), Amis here aims his barbed wit at an easy target—the cultural excesses of the Sixties. It's not just radical chic and open marriage that Amis mocks in this rather tired fiction. He's still griping about long hair and mod fashion! In any case, the more immediate dilemma—the problem set out in the title—affects Patrick Standish, a former Latin teacher, now working for the trendy publishing firm of Hammond and Sutcliffe, whose list of authors provides Patrick with much to grump about. The poets are insufferable bores, the novelists mostly illiterate boobs. But Patrick is himself something of a fool. Despite being married to a woman of great beauty and solid character, he still chases skirts with reckless abandon. His loyal wife, Jenny, childless after seven years of marriage, suffers her husband's satyriasis with a stiff upper lip, even when she should send him packing. Although their marital warfare takes up much of this rambling narrative, there are others here with "girl" problems. There's Tim Valentine, a mysterious new neighbor who has been convinced by his pompous shrink that his premature ejaculations indicate deep-rooted homosexuality, a theory he wants to explore in his new digs. There's Simon Giles, Patrick's boss, who hopes to control his wife's sexual wanderlust by setting her up with Patrick. There's Patrick's other neighbor, Eric, a demure homosexual who puts up with his shrill and feminine love, a former actor with a taste for sordid melodrama—he's referred to as "she" throughout in order to stress the commonality of their discord. This subplot about the "incredibly nasty and incredibly dangerous" world of homosexuality is intended, amazingly enough, as an argument against the decriminalization of homosexual acts—legislation that passed back in the time during which the novel is set. Patrick's chastening, meanwhile, results from a predictable plot device—Jenny finally manages to get pregnant. With great comedic skill, Amis highlights the disparity between what characters say and what they think. But here bis talents are wasted on a dull sex farce that resolves itself with much cheap moralizing.
Pub Date: April 5, 1989
ISBN: 0517063190
Page Count: -
Publisher: Summit/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: March 17, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 1989
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
Dated sermonizing on career versus motherhood, and conflict driven by characters’ willed helplessness, sap this tale of...
Lifelong, conflicted friendship of two women is the premise of Hannah’s maudlin latest (Magic Hour, 2006, etc.), again set in Washington State.
Tallulah “Tully” Hart, father unknown, is the daughter of a hippie, Cloud, who makes only intermittent appearances in her life. Tully takes refuge with the family of her “best friend forever,” Kate Mularkey, who compares herself unfavorably with Tully, in regards to looks and charisma. In college, “TullyandKate” pledge the same sorority and major in communications. Tully has a life goal for them both: They will become network TV anchorwomen. Tully lands an internship at KCPO-TV in Seattle and finagles a producing job for Kate. Kate no longer wishes to follow Tully into broadcasting and is more drawn to fiction writing, but she hesitates to tell her overbearing friend. Meanwhile a love triangle blooms at KCPO: Hard-bitten, irresistibly handsome, former war correspondent Johnny is clearly smitten with Tully. Expecting rejection, Kate keeps her infatuation with Johnny secret. When Tully lands a reporting job with a Today-like show, her career shifts into hyperdrive. Johnny and Kate had started an affair once Tully moved to Manhattan, and when Kate gets pregnant with daughter Marah, they marry. Kate is content as a stay-at-home mom, but frets about being Johnny’s second choice and about her unrealized writing ambitions. Tully becomes Seattle’s answer to Oprah. She hires Johnny, which spells riches for him and Kate. But Kate’s buttons are fully depressed by pitched battles over slutwear and curfews with teenaged Marah, who idolizes her godmother Tully. In an improbable twist, Tully invites Kate and Marah to resolve their differences on her show, only to blindside Kate by accusing her, on live TV, of overprotecting Marah. The BFFs are sundered. Tully’s latest attempt to salvage Cloud fails: The incorrigible, now geriatric hippie absconds once more. Just as Kate develops a spine, she’s given some devastating news. Will the friends reconcile before it’s too late?
Dated sermonizing on career versus motherhood, and conflict driven by characters’ willed helplessness, sap this tale of poignancy.Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2008
ISBN: 978-0-312-36408-3
Page Count: 496
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2007
BOOK TO SCREEN
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