A complex, ambitious, and thought-provoking novel about unifying love.
Unwitting players in a universe-spanning game make choices that will determine Earth’s survival in this novel of ideas.
New York City–based investment banker David Cornwell is selfish, arrogant, and obsessed with winning. He loves his job: “The pure, shameless focus on making outrageous amounts of money. On being the first. The top. The richest. The best.” Meanwhile, on a world called Home Planet, a gray being called Noœ-bouk uses his energy-channeling abilities to help along the planet’s long-term development. Next, Noœ-bouk will travel to Earth in an attempt to help it to ascend to a new plane of consciousness. Elsewhere, in what seems to be a huge library, the newly dead Sir Alisdair McCauley meets Duncan, a guide who will prepare him to review his happy, successful life. Back in London, Alisdair’s beloved, free-spirited granddaughter, Elspeth, decides whether she should take the guaranteed job that he’d arranged for her. But as Noœ-bouk, Alisdair, and Elspeth take steps toward greater knowledge and freedom, David spirals downward, committing a terrible crime. All their destinies turn out to be part of a massive “unity game,” which eventually leads to love, experienced in every possible manifestation. Meriel (The Woman Behind the Waterfall, 2016) transcends genre in this novel, employing elements of magical realism, science fiction, love stories, and philosophy as well as keen-eyed social critique, employing a range of voices. The novel requires some patience, particularly during the sections dealing with Noœ-bouk’s narrative, written in a remote, dry, and abstract tone and requiring readers to assimilate a good deal of information. Yet the story of Noœ-bouk (which later includes another character, Adm. Ba-hutá) becomes, in its way, a deeply romantic tale of love and sacrifice. Problematic, though, is the idea that earthly injustice or evil is merely a “brave life path” freely chosen by advanced souls. This view makes sense of why someone like David might deserve redemption, but many readers may find it hard to swallow nonetheless.
A complex, ambitious, and thought-provoking novel about unifying love.Pub Date: May 1, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-911079-43-9
Page Count: 342
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: April 11, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles...
Sisters in and out of love.
Meghann Dontess is a high-powered matrimonial lawyer in Seattle who prefers sex with strangers to emotional intimacy: a strategy bound to backfire sooner or later, warns her tough-talking shrink. It’s advice Meghann decides to ignore, along with the memories of her difficult childhood, neglectful mother, and younger sister. Though she managed to reunite Claire with Sam Cavenaugh (her father but not Meghann’s) when her mother abandoned both girls long ago, Meghann still feels guilty that her sister’s life doesn’t measure up, at least on her terms. Never married, Claire ekes out a living running a country campground with her dad and is raising her six-year-old daughter on her own. When she falls in love for the first time with an up-and-coming country musician, Meghann is appalled: Bobby Austin is a three-time loser at marriage—how on earth can Claire be so blind? Bobby’s blunt explanation doesn’t exactly satisfy the concerned big sister, who busies herself planning Claire’s dream wedding anyway. And, to relieve the stress, she beds various guys she picks up in bars, including Dr. Joe Wyatt, a neurosurgeon turned homeless drifter after the demise of his beloved wife Diane (whom he euthanized). When Claire’s awful headache turns out to be a kind of brain tumor known among neurologists as a “terminator,” Joe rallies. Turns out that Claire had befriended his wife on her deathbed, and now in turn he must try to save her. Is it too late? Will Meghann find true love at last?
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles (Distant Shores, 2002, etc.). Kudos for skipping the snifflefest this time around.Pub Date: May 1, 2003
ISBN: 0-345-45073-6
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2003
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
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