A shark fisherman's greed and paranoia foul his get-rich-quick scheme in this tidy novella (self-published in 1984). In 1940, the unnamed 29-year-old narrator buys a small boat, hoping to keep his wife and children out of poverty by leading fishing expeditions. Then the Nazis cut off Scandinavian fish exports, a major source of vitamin A; at the same time it is discovered that shark livers contain staggering levels of the expensive and rare vitamin. High demand for sharks drives prices through the roof and creates prospecting opportunities in San Francisco's fertile waters comparable to those of the Gold Rush. The nervous narrator, an unskilled fisherman, avoids going out for sharks until the last weekend of the season. Then he hires ``weird and honest'' Ethan May, an expert shark hunter, who leads him to fish at the 40 fathom bank (where sharks usually feed) after they agree that the narrator will keep the first three tons of shark they catch and May will take the rest, which could be 20 tons or more. The silent loneliness of the sea (May is not a conversationalist) and the interminable waiting involved in catching sharks gives the narrator too much time to let his expansive imagination wreak havoc. In between vivid descriptions of life at sea and the shark-hunting process, he indulges in reminiscences of his childhood, dreams, and concerns about his family. This, combined with his tendency toward Poe-esque paranoia, leads him to the unfounded conclusion that May is a malicious money-grubber. He projects his manic, vacillating temperament onto the hunter's quiet, unflappable one until May appears as an epic monster in his avaricious eyes—a determination that leads to the tale's violent, inevitable denouement. A pithy one-hour read for literary fishing enthusiasts.
Pub Date: June 6, 1994
ISBN: 0-8118-0034-2
Page Count: 108
Publisher: Chronicle Books
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 1994
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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