High marks for adventure and romance in this Gothic historical thriller; a novel to make you swoon on a dark and stormy...
Hall picks up where Charlotte Brontë left off with a tale of murder, jealousy, class and forbidden love.
Hall follows the themes and motifs of the classic Gothic novel almost as meticulously as she weaves 19th century historical anecdotes into the plot. Both techniques serve to create a refreshing, exciting story in which the young, virtuous heroine, Lillie Lorimer, travels to America to seek refuge with an estranged relative following the death of her father and sole benefactor. Unfortunately, tragedy strikes again, and she is forced to seek her own means of supporting herself in the bustling, tenement-laden streets of New York City. As luck would have it, a job practically falls into Lillie’s lap, and all seems not lost. Yet her new job as governess to the children of devastatingly rich and handsome railroad magnate Jay Caldwell may not be such a dream. At Clifftop Manor, situated on the picturesque Long Island Sound, she has much to worry about, namely her dangerous attraction to her employer, shady figures traveling through secret tunnels and passages and the growing envy of Caldwell’s irrational wife. Though the plot seems byzantine in structure, it unfolds with great care and precision, solving mysteries as it creates new ones. Each chapter bounds well off the next and creates playful suspense. The juxtaposition of poverty and opulence in chapters one and two is especially artful, as it establishes the urban setting while building a tension that lasts throughout the novel. The book’s weakness lies with its protagonist; though it may have been the author’s intention to create a kind of 19th century everywoman that other women can relate to, it leaves Lillie without a distinctive voice. Luckily, the plot itself is grand and turbulent enough to carry the novel on its own.
High marks for adventure and romance in this Gothic historical thriller; a novel to make you swoon on a dark and stormy night.Pub Date: Aug. 16, 2011
ISBN: 978-1463716295
Page Count: 452
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Oct. 3, 2011
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
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
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