A measured, riveting tale, written in a confident, impassioned voice.
A Massachusetts teenager of mixed heritage leaves his family behind to search for his own identity in 1960s America in Cardillo’s (The Smallest Christmas Tree, 2015, etc.) historical-drama sequel.
The Monroes revel in their quiet life in Cape Poge on Chappaquiddick Island. But tragedy rears its ugly head in 1955 when polio attacks the family’s youngest child, 7-year-old Izzy. Mother Mae takes time away from her Boat House Café, which she’d established on her own in the series’ first book, to care for her ailing daughter. Son Josiah, meanwhile, struggles to connect to his Wampanoag roots. Despite the fact that his father, Tobias, is the tribe’s sachem (chief), some tribespeople feel that Jo that doesn’t belong because his mother is Irish. Meanwhile, Mae’s engaging, selfless friend, Betty, acts as a surrogate mother for the confused, adolescent Jo. (One can only hope that she will lead a spinoff book series.) Izzy survives polio with a paralyzed left leg, necessitating braces and crutches; later, Hurricane Donna damages the café so extensively that the family may not be able to afford repairs. Selling Mae’s land, Innisfree, however, could mean that the family would be able to pay for experimental corrective surgery for Izzy, which could allow her to walk unaided. Jo feels that losing Innisfree would be like losing another part of himself. He absconds to Boston and eventually tracks down Patrick, one of Mae’s estranged siblings. It turns out that mother and son are more alike than they’re willing to admit. This unhurried novel tackles crucial issues with panache. The theme of finding one’s identity, for example, also applies to Izzy, who doesn’t want to be defined by her disease. The novel also presents racism with subtlety, as when people guess where Jo’s from based solely on the color of his skin. Over the course of the story, Cardillo skillfully weaves in events from real-life history, as when Jo later serves as a combat medic in Vietnam. The novel only falters when it shifts its perspective to Tobias, whose relatively harmless act earns him unjust ire from Mae and Izzy; this thread lacks the dramatic punch of the rest of the narrative.
A measured, riveting tale, written in a confident, impassioned voice.Pub Date: April 1, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-942209-23-2
Page Count: 380
Publisher: Bellastoria Press
Review Posted Online: Aug. 15, 2016
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
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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