A sprawling and frequently ponderous tale about the film industry in Hollywood and on location elsewhere in the late 1930s and the early days of WW II, from a scion of Hollywood families who's distinguished himself as the author of such novels as King of the Jews (1979) and Pinto and Sons (1990). The story begins in 1937, with a flight carrying famed director Rudolph Von Beckmann and his cast (including narrator Peter Lorre) and crew to Munich, where the master will stage a theatrical production of Sophocles' Antigone. But the burgeoning Nazi momentum changes their plans—particularly those of Von Beckmann's adored star Magdalena Mezaray, who is appropriated, as it were, by the government for its new FÅhrer's entertainment. Other distractions—such as the great director's homosexual passions and Lorre's hopeless fixation on his colleague and sometime co-star Rochelle Hudson—variously affect Von Beckmann's ingenious plan: to film his Antigone in the guise of a Wild West melodrama, to be shot in a remote Nevada town named (all too sympathetically) Pandaemonium. The outcome is tragic, but its impact is lessened by the distance at which we're kept from Epstein's confusing host of fictional and real characters (including his well-known father and uncle, the successful screenwriters Philip G. and Julius J. Epstein). The momentum is further flattened by recurring excerpts from the columns of gossipmonger Louella Parsons, whose participation in the climactic action doesn't seem fully credible. Peter Lorre is a potentially attractive focal character—his barely contained fury at contractual obligations binding him perhaps forever to the unfulfilling role of serial sleuth ``Mr. Moto'' is well conveyed, as are his fears for the fate of Jews, including himself—but Epstein has given him a whiny, self-absorbed voice and manner that severely undercut our identification and empathy with him. The materials for a fine novel are here, but this one feels both overwrought and uninvolving.
Pub Date: May 1, 1997
ISBN: 0-312-15622-7
Page Count: 384
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 1997
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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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