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GRACELAND

There's something forced about Kalpakian's adequately written sixth book (Dark Continent, 1989, etc.)—a melodramatic novel that celebrates Elvis Presley as a cultural and spiritual icon. Joyce Jackson (born Rejoice Denby) is a welfare mother in the fictional town of St. Elmo, California, who displays an ``undue, unusual attachment to the late Elvis Presley.'' As her affluent caseworker from Laguna Beach learns, Joyce has substituted a religious devotion to Elvis for the fundamentalism of her oppressive youth. She truly believes that the naive rock-and-roller is her personal savior, and that she must carry out his nonmusical works as an emissary to the poor and afflicted. Part of her mission is the shrine on her front porch, known locally as ``Heartbreak Hotel.'' Into Joyce's life comes the uptight Emily Shaw, a rich girl biding her time until she marries her law-student boyfriend. From the get-go, Emily drops her professional demeanor in Joyce's presence, since the idolater refuses to fit the social-services mold: she's industrious, charitable, and a good mother to her daughters, Priscilla and Lisa Marie. She's also a welfare cheat, hiding income and arousing the attention of Emily's supervisor, the unsympathetic ``Large Marge,'' a grotesque and bitter woman bent on humiliation. We learn in flashbacks that the King's music saved Joyce from the nasty Fifties, just as he will save others over the course of this predictable novel. Emily will recognize the vapidness of her preordained life of luxury, and Joyce's ex will survive a motorcycle accident, only to return home. Emily's predecessor as Joyce's caseworker, the experienced and dedicated Sid Johnson, an unlikely Elvis fan, discourses on the singer's important cultural contribution. Everything works out okay here among those who acknowledge that Elvis ``died for us,'' and that his drug abuse only proved his humanity. As silly and superficial as the class analysis it advances, Kalpakian's sluggish narrative rocks as hard as the King on Quaaludes.

Pub Date: May 1, 1992

ISBN: 0-8021-1474-1

Page Count: 293

Publisher: Grove

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 1992

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A LITTLE LIFE

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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TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD

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

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