An indelible protagonist whom readers should pity—and easily champion.
A woman uses her uncanny ability to inflict lethal retribution against the men she believes murdered her parents in this supernatural thriller.
Twentysomething Lou Thorne’s been pursuing Angelo Martinelli for more than a decade. She believes the gangster is behind the shooting deaths of her mother, Courtney, and DEA agent father, Jack. Swearing revenge, Lou employs skills in marksmanship (courtesy of Jack) as well as aikido to target heroin-running Martinelli and his associates. But her greatest advantage is “slipping,” the power to transport herself and other things and people via shadows. She can also slip in water to what she calls La Loon, an otherworldly place inhabited by strange creatures. Aunt Lucy, who raised Lou since the girl lost her parents, can travel by shadow but not water. Worried that Lou’s relentless vengeance will end in her death, Lucy asks Robbie King, an ex-DEA agent and Jack’s mentor, for help. So King, who dabbles in (unlicensed) private eye work in New Orleans, brings Lou in on a case—tracking down a witness before the ex-boyfriend can. This, however, may prove just as dangerous as systematically taking out Martinelli’s mules, which Lou doesn’t stop doing. And learning that someone else may be responsible for her parents’ deaths only strengthens her resolve. Shrum’s (Dying Breath, 2016, etc.) tale is bolstered by an undeniably resilient protagonist. Lou’s smart and adept (finding these men largely on her own), and her gift makes her a formidable opponent to her enemies. This is augmented by a steady pace and rugged prose: Lou “soothed” by the sound of “mashing the Velcro” of her bulletproof vest “together only to rip it apart again.” The plot doesn’t resonate as strongly; there’s little in the way of investigatory scenes, for example, concerning either King’s case or Lou’s search for baddies. But there are startling character turns (including a double cross or two), some insight into Lou’s potential psychological damage, and sufficient material to ignite a series and an even sharper focus on Lou.
An indelible protagonist whom readers should pity—and easily champion.Pub Date: Jan. 19, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-5426-2387-2
Page Count: 508
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: July 13, 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 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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