A sincere journey of transformation that successfully balances politics and storytelling with heartwarming results.
In Smith’s novel, a young man finds that it’s time to grow up and change his reckless behavior after he loses his dear friend to AIDS.
David Mathews has come into a good-sized inheritance, including a Manhattan loft and a beach house in the Hamptons. But this sudden wealth doesn’t stop him from hustling—the sexual currency he’s grown accustomed to in New York. It was hustling that introduced him to the man who left him a fortune: Robert, a charming man who profiled David in his magazine and took him under his wing. One of David’s habits is imagining the characters in his memories as famous people, from Matt Dillon to Didi Conn; he does this instead of facing his real recollections, ever since he ran away from Arkansas as a teenager. David still grieves for Robert, who died of AIDS, but despite his proximity to the devastating disease, he still has unprotected sex. Indeed, it becomes David’s thrill and secret—one he continues to keep even after Robert appears to him as a ghost, acting as a chatty sidekick while David navigates the ups and downs of his life. When David’s estranged family calls him home to see his dying mother, Robert’s ghost comes along, for better or worse. Once there, David meets Chris, an artist who has stricter boundaries regarding safe sex. Before David’s mother dies, he learns a secret that brings his real memories back to him, and casts his sexual behavior in a different light. It will take the kindness of a transgender nurse, and Chris’ convictions as a gay man and an artist, for David to become the man that Robert always knew he was. The political landscape of the novel is commendably and easily woven into the characters’ interactions, while never overpowering the plot. Mentorship and love are beautifully illustrated in David’s relationships with both Robert and Chris. The appearance of Robert’s ghost allows readers to understand the complexities of David’s grief. The story is a bit slow to start, and each chapter is distractingly and confusingly accompanied by a dated list, which doesn’t match the chapter’s time frame. Also, although the characters are well-drawn, they aren’t a huge departure from LGBT characters readers may have met before. Overall, however, this is an ambitious novel that delivers redemption with humor and heart.
A sincere journey of transformation that successfully balances politics and storytelling with heartwarming results.Pub Date: May 21, 2014
ISBN: 978-0996023320
Page Count: 294
Publisher: PressLess, LLC
Review Posted Online: June 10, 2014
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.
Life lessons.
Angie Malone, the youngest of a big, warm Italian-American family, returns to her Pacific Northwest hometown to wrestle with various midlife disappointments: her divorce, Papa’s death, a downturn in business at the family restaurant, and, above all, her childlessness. After several miscarriages, she, a successful ad exec, and husband Conlan, a reporter, befriended a pregnant young girl and planned to adopt her baby—and then the birth mother changed her mind. Angie and Conlan drifted apart and soon found they just didn’t love each other anymore. Metaphorically speaking, “her need for a child had been a high tide, an overwhelming force that drowned them. A year ago, she could have kicked to the surface but not now.” Sadder but wiser, Angie goes to work in the struggling family restaurant, bickering with Mama over updating the menu and replacing the ancient waitress. Soon, Angie befriends another young girl, Lauren Ribido, who’s eager to learn and desperately needs a job. Lauren’s family lives on the wrong side of the tracks, and her mother is a promiscuous alcoholic, but Angie knows nothing of this sad story and welcomes Lauren into the DeSaria family circle. The girl listens in, wide-eyed, as the sisters argue and make wisecracks and—gee-whiz—are actually nice to each other. Nothing at all like her relationship with her sluttish mother, who throws Lauren out when boyfriend David, en route to Stanford, gets her pregnant. Will Lauren, who’s just been accepted to USC, let Angie adopt her baby? Well, a bit of a twist at the end keeps things from becoming too predictable.
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.Pub Date: July 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-345-46750-7
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2004
An unusual and mesmerizing novel, gracefully written and deeply disturbing.
In her first novel to be published in English, South Korean writer Han divides a story about strange obsessions and metamorphosis into three parts, each with a distinct voice.
Yeong-hye and her husband drift through calm, unexceptional lives devoid of passion or anything that might disrupt their domestic routine until the day that Yeong-hye takes every piece of meat from the refrigerator, throws it away, and announces that she's become a vegetarian. Her decision is sudden and rigid, inexplicable to her family and a society where unconventional choices elicit distaste and concern that borders on fear. Yeong-hye tries to explain that she had a dream, a horrifying nightmare of bloody, intimate violence, and that's why she won't eat meat, but her husband and family remain perplexed and disturbed. As Yeong-hye sinks further into both nightmares and the conviction that she must transform herself into a different kind of being, her condition alters the lives of three members of her family—her husband, brother-in-law, and sister—forcing them to confront unsettling desires and the alarming possibility that even with the closest familiarity, people remain strangers. Each of these relatives claims a section of the novel, and each section is strikingly written, equally absorbing whether lush or emotionally bleak. The book insists on a reader’s attention, with an almost hypnotically serene atmosphere interrupted by surreal images and frighteningly recognizable moments of ordinary despair. Han writes convincingly of the disruptive power of longing and the choice to either embrace or deny it, using details that are nearly fantastical in their strangeness to cut to the heart of the very human experience of discovering that one is no longer content with life as it is.
An unusual and mesmerizing novel, gracefully written and deeply disturbing.Pub Date: Feb. 2, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-553-44818-4
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Hogarth
Review Posted Online: Oct. 19, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
© 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.
