A psychological thriller about an enigmatic killer that’s both inventive and unflinching.
A man struggles to manage the dark trauma of his youth, and the havoc it continues to wreak on his adulthood.
When James Davis was a young teen, he suffered under the abusive tyranny of his father, Frank, an irredeemable alcoholic. James’ father eventually turned his anger toward his wife, Brenda, and he finally killed her in a fit of rage. But then a mysterious man charged into the house and strangled Frank to death. James’ rescuer, Alistair, demanded that his part in the tragic affair be kept a secret, and the teen obliged. Years later, James is lost in shiftless ennui, stuck in a dead-end job, and utterly alone. He finally makes a friend at the gym, Mark, who convinces him to see a therapist, the young and beautiful Natalie Pruitt. For the first time in years, James feels a tinge of hope that he might be able to turn his life around, and find a sliver of animating purpose. But then, Alistair inexplicably shows up, and aggressively inserts himself into James’ life. It’s not clear whether Alistair intends to help James repair his broken existence out of some avuncular impulse, or use him as an instrument for his own twisted ends: “Because of a moment in time of their shared past, Alistair was a part of him, for better or worse, and James knew he would never truly be free.” But James is scared for his life, and for the lives of those close to him, as suddenly there seems to be a killer at large in this previously sleepy Maryland suburb. Debut author Logsdon adeptly captures James’ troubled childhood, intermittently flashing back to scenes from it, while also including narrative vignettes depicting the volatile relationship between his parents. At one point, the young James muses about Frank’s cruelty: “The man knew how to make his verbal assaults cut like a knife,” right in Brenda’s “most vulnerable places.” This is a sepulcher tale, and squeamish readers may struggle with some of the grim details, vividly conveyed, about abuse and murder. But the author slowly, chillingly leads readers to a suspenseful conclusion that makes some forbearance of the book’s gloomier aspects well worth it. This is an unpredictable and heart-pounding mystery.
A psychological thriller about an enigmatic killer that’s both inventive and unflinching.Pub Date: May 21, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-5307-7652-8
Page Count: 292
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: July 22, 2016
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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