Even the most diehard Austen fans may find this work to be too much.
An Austen addict who’s been having romantic trouble in contemporary Los Angeles finds herself transported to early-19th-century England living a life that seems lifted from a compilation of the Austen novels.
One morning shortly after Courtney has broken with her fiancé Frank—he’s been carrying on with the wedding-cake decorator—she mysteriously wakes up inside the body of Miss Jane Mansfield in 1813. Thirty-year-old Jane is recovering from an equine accident and resisting her unpleasant mother’s attempts to push her into marriage. At first Courtney thinks her time travel is a dream, but when she begins talking defiantly, Mrs. Mansfield threatens to put Jane into an asylum. Courtney/Jane slides into the life of an Austen heroine, resisting the charms of handsome Mr. Edgeworth, who reminds her too much of not only Frank but his best friend Wes, to whom Courtney has been feeling drawn despite herself. She confides her confusing identity to Edgeworth’s sister Mary, Jane’s true friend who has dissuaded her from marrying Edgeworth because she thinks he fathered a housemaid’s illegitimate child. Mary also resents that he broke off her romance with a man he found unsuitable. Mary and Jane/Courtney travel the Austen map, first to Bath, then to London, along the way encountering men and women who will be familiar to the most casual Austen reader. First-time novelist Rigler jumbles names and pieces of plot line from the novels into an Austenian dream (or nightmare). Mary and Jane/Courtney learn that Mary’s former beloved was a cad and that Edgeworth acted nobly with the maid, not sexually. How Courtney entered Jane’s body, through the ministrations of a magical fortuneteller, is almost an afterthought. Jane/Courtney’s 21st-century urges offer provocative possibilities, but Courtney’s world is a pale sketch, and Jane’s so laden with Austen references that it has no life.
Even the most diehard Austen fans may find this work to be too much.Pub Date: Aug. 2, 2007
ISBN: 978-0-525-95040-0
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Dutton
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2007
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
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.
Sisters work together to solve a child-abandonment case.
Ellie and Julia Cates have never been close. Julia is shy and brainy; Ellie gets by on charm and looks. Their differences must be tossed aside when a traumatized young girl wanders in from the forest into their hometown in Washington. The sisters’ professional skills are put to the test. Julia is a world-renowned child psychologist who has lost her edge. She is reeling from a case that went publicly sour. Though she was cleared of all wrongdoing, Julia’s name was tarnished, forcing her to shutter her Beverly Hills practice. Ellie Barton is the local police chief in Rain Valley, who’s never faced a tougher case. This is her chance to prove she is more than just a fading homecoming queen, but a scarcity of clues and a reluctant victim make locating the girl’s parents nearly impossible. Ellie places an SOS call to her sister; she needs an expert to rehabilitate this wild-child who has been living outside of civilization for years. Confronted with her professional demons, Julia once again has the opportunity to display her talents and salvage her reputation. Hannah (The Things We Do for Love, 2004, etc.) is at her best when writing from the girl’s perspective. The feral wolf-child keeps the reader interested long after the other, transparent characters have grown tiresome. Hannah’s torturously over-written romance passages are stale, but there are surprises in store as the sisters set about unearthing Alice’s past and creating a home for her.
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.Pub Date: March 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-345-46752-3
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2005
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