An affecting, if self-absorbed, novel about art and the ways it does and doesn't reflect life.
A female art-school graduate chasing the muse of Georgia O'Keeffe in Santa Fe is drawn into a forgery ring and struggles to embrace her individuality as a person.
In Campbell's brief, intensely introspective debut, Ivy Wilkes' dream of becoming a great painter is sidetracked when her upstairs neighbor Maya, a teacher and cellist, talks her into copying O'Keeffe's works with the intention of selling them on the international underground market. Hungry for something to happen in her life, Ivy overcomes her qualms about selling fakes as originals. She buys into the notion that it's a victimless crime—the forgeries are sold to vacuous corporate types who are drawn to the paintings for the prestige they bring and not for their artistic merits. And distributing the copies gives greater exposure to deserving artists like O'Keeffe. Surprised to discover that her lover Omar, a café owner who is Maya's cousin, is also involved in the forgery scheme, Ivy sinks deeper into a life of secrets and lies. She has an affair with Maya's affable live-in boyfriend Jake, a violinist who works as a security guard in the O'Keeffe Museum (where Ivy toils in the gift shop) but knows nothing of the forgeries. Set off by O'Keeffe quotations and shadowed by descriptions of her early years, the book basks in thoughts and feelings on the meaning of art, as well as the nature of love, the contradictions of self and the power of one's surroundings. Campbell's taut, analytical approach doesn't allow much room for humor, and the writing can be a bit swoony. But the pragmatic Omar's downplaying of the role of inspiration in art offsets Ivy's romanticism, and the book draws emotional resonance from the parallels she sees between her life and O'Keeffe's.
An affecting, if self-absorbed, novel about art and the ways it does and doesn't reflect life.Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2010
ISBN: 978-1-57962-205-3
Page Count: 200
Publisher: Permanent Press
Review Posted Online: Aug. 5, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2010
BOOK REVIEW
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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