A compelling, sensitive contribution to the agriculture debate in the U.S.
After the sudden loss of her husband, a woman struggles to keep her farm, and spirits, afloat in this debut novel.
Berta’s husband, Lonnie, a financially floundering farmer, reluctantly agrees to a contract with a massive poultry organization to secure his family’s future. Lonnie dies in a freak accident, and uses his last breath to extract a promise from his wife to keep the farm going. Berta has close to three years left on the original loan required to start the farm. And because Lonnie was in charge of the business, she lacks practical experience and knowledge. Meanwhile, Poultry Unlimited, the corporate outfit she works with as an independent contractor, greedily demands that she transform her farm into an enterprise that is more technologically efficient, but also potentially less humane and eco-friendly. To complicate matters further, Berta falls in love with Dylan Williams, her field representative at Poultry Unlimited, and a noticeably younger man. Despite the powerful connection between them, Berta’s growing disenchantment with Poultry Unlimited contaminates her feelings for Dylan. The story chronicles Berta’s intense attachment to the farm, which is less a function of her original promise to Lonnie than an expression of her guilt over pulling him into a business to which he was never all that attracted. Despite being encouraged by others to sue for damages related to Lonnie’s death, and sell the farm, she weathers extreme financial distress to hold onto it. While this engaging novel offers a poignant tale, it’s never clear why Lonnie was so attached to the farm that he would plead with his wife while dying to preserve it, a patently imprudent wish bound to saddle his wife and son, Al, with adversity. Lytle also indulges in more than a little melodrama and heavy-handed symbolism. For example, Lonnie actually manages to mention which fan blades in the chicken house are clean while drawing his last breath, and Al is born on Labor Day. These cloying missteps are the kinds of literary contrivances that distance a reader from the emotional substance of the narrative. But the book as a whole remains a searing testament to love and loss, as well as an intelligent indictment of big agro-business.
A compelling, sensitive contribution to the agriculture debate in the U.S.Pub Date: May 29, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-9961950-2-7
Page Count: 366
Publisher: Hedgehog & Fox
Review Posted Online: Dec. 16, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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