A stark, striking study of childhood abuse and recovery.
A woman recalls her traumatic, impoverished childhood growing up in Canada in the 1970s and ’80s in this debut fictionalized memoir.
Hoover begins her narrative with a note that it’s “a true story,” yet “all names are fictitious and from the author’s imagination.” Following that disclaimer, she tells the first-person tale of Lynn Hellers’ painful childhood and of her rising determination to improve her circumstances. Lynn is the eldest of four children to a couple in a low-income area of Kingston, Ontario. Her mechanic father is a physically abusive drunk; her beautiful mother has some nurturing qualities, but she’s largely cowed by her husband and overlooks or enables his behavior. She’s also often away due to her bank job, which is a critical second source of income for the family. Both Lynn and her sister are sexually abused by the criminal types who hang around the home of Lynn’s paternal grandmother, a crude Ma Barker–style woman who runs many illegal activities. Thankfully, Lynn, at least, manages to spend more of her time with her maternal grandparents, who encourage her artistic ability. Her high school boyfriend is a substance abuser, but he also provides her with emotional support. By story’s end, Lynn is accepted into a university and acquires a student apartment and a job, which leads to an art teaching career and her eventual embrace of her gay identity. Debut author Hoover offers a blend of documentary-style reportage and artistic perspective to this work. Her detailing of Lynn’s father, in particular, has the raw ring of truth, and her descriptions of several of Lynn’s personal photographs as chronological markers within the narrative are effective. Overall, it’s a compelling tale, although there are some hauntingly underdeveloped threads, such as the fate of Lynn’s siblings and her father’s surprisingly emotional response to her leaving home. Still, as Lynn herself notes several times, her focus on herself was ultimately necessary for her survival.
A stark, striking study of childhood abuse and recovery.Pub Date: Feb. 26, 2015
ISBN: 978-1460262726
Page Count: 264
Publisher: FriesenPress
Review Posted Online: May 20, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2015
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
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
bookshelf
