Great fun for any century.
A quick-witted prostitute in 19th-century Copenhagen finds love in 21st-century London.
Charlotte Schleswig has many survival skills, which is a good thing. Since she ran away from the orphanage, she has been supporting herself and Fru Schleswig, the slovenly, illiterate cook who followed her, claiming to be her mother. (Charlotte doesn’t believe her.) Nonetheless, she does what she must to keep a roof over their heads, and she keeps watch for blackmail opportunities and other better money-making schemes. When the pompous widow Fru Krak advertises for a maid, Charlotte applies. Fru Krak instructs Charlotte (who negotiates the position for herself and Fru Schleswig) to make her house presentable for her intended, a Parson, but never to enter the basement . . . which is where Charlotte goes at the first chance. There she finds a strange contraption rumored to be a Suicide Machine. Before he disappeared, Fru Krak’s husband, professor Herr Krak, is said to have offered trips to the “great beyond.” And although his ghost has been spied around the city, his body has never been found. Charlotte investigates, but the hapless Fru Schleswig intervenes, and suddenly the two of them find themselves in 21st-century London. Professor Krak and a group of other displaced Dutch citizens greet them. After introducing Charlotte and Fru Schleswig to the wonders of modern times—Fru Schleswig is particularly taken with the vacuum cleaner—they enlist Charlotte to travel back to Copenhagen and help them protect the time machine from Fru Krak, who will surely destroy it before her impending marriage, cutting off their opportunity to ever return. Charlotte hopes to profit from happenstance, until she unexpectedly falls in love with a Scottish archaeologist—who thinks she is Croatian. She has a wee bit of explaining to do. Jensen (The Ninth Life of Louis Drax, 2005, etc.) has created a marvelous heroine in Charlotte, whose agile mind and love/hate relationship with the doltish Fru Schleswig give this Time and Again–esque love story a comic spin.
Great fun for any century.Pub Date: July 11, 2006
ISBN: 1-59691-188-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2006
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
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Dated sermonizing on career versus motherhood, and conflict driven by characters’ willed helplessness, sap this tale of...
Lifelong, conflicted friendship of two women is the premise of Hannah’s maudlin latest (Magic Hour, 2006, etc.), again set in Washington State.
Tallulah “Tully” Hart, father unknown, is the daughter of a hippie, Cloud, who makes only intermittent appearances in her life. Tully takes refuge with the family of her “best friend forever,” Kate Mularkey, who compares herself unfavorably with Tully, in regards to looks and charisma. In college, “TullyandKate” pledge the same sorority and major in communications. Tully has a life goal for them both: They will become network TV anchorwomen. Tully lands an internship at KCPO-TV in Seattle and finagles a producing job for Kate. Kate no longer wishes to follow Tully into broadcasting and is more drawn to fiction writing, but she hesitates to tell her overbearing friend. Meanwhile a love triangle blooms at KCPO: Hard-bitten, irresistibly handsome, former war correspondent Johnny is clearly smitten with Tully. Expecting rejection, Kate keeps her infatuation with Johnny secret. When Tully lands a reporting job with a Today-like show, her career shifts into hyperdrive. Johnny and Kate had started an affair once Tully moved to Manhattan, and when Kate gets pregnant with daughter Marah, they marry. Kate is content as a stay-at-home mom, but frets about being Johnny’s second choice and about her unrealized writing ambitions. Tully becomes Seattle’s answer to Oprah. She hires Johnny, which spells riches for him and Kate. But Kate’s buttons are fully depressed by pitched battles over slutwear and curfews with teenaged Marah, who idolizes her godmother Tully. In an improbable twist, Tully invites Kate and Marah to resolve their differences on her show, only to blindside Kate by accusing her, on live TV, of overprotecting Marah. The BFFs are sundered. Tully’s latest attempt to salvage Cloud fails: The incorrigible, now geriatric hippie absconds once more. Just as Kate develops a spine, she’s given some devastating news. Will the friends reconcile before it’s too late?
Dated sermonizing on career versus motherhood, and conflict driven by characters’ willed helplessness, sap this tale of poignancy.Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2008
ISBN: 978-0-312-36408-3
Page Count: 496
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2007
BOOK TO SCREEN
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