A complex and engrossing read about building a boat that’s rich in character and spirit.
Heberden (Outside Man, 2014, etc.) paints a particular portrait of American wants, values, and ideals in this contemporary literary novel.
When Eric Sumners decides to buy a boat for his wife, it seems like a simple enough plan. It’s the action of a rich man, certainly, but no more complex than the purchase of any expensive, beautiful romantic gesture. But while viewing his ideal ship, Eric stumbles on something that calls these ideas of beauty, art, and romance into question. A glimpse of a rowboat made by a neighboring craftsman creates a spark of imagination in Eric, and the gaudy, famed Nickerson ketch doesn’t seem nearly as appealing—much less artistic—as something built from scratch, made of wood with care. A true, genuine labor of love. But Eric’s whims and dreams don’t only concern him, and the size of the undertaking means much more than he could have anticipated. For Scott McKay, the disaffected artisan who made the boat Eric has become so enamored with, the wealthy man’s dreams represent an opportunity to prove himself to his business partners and live up to his potential by building this remarkable project. Meanwhile, Scott’s partner, Jack Colby, sees the project as a foolhardy risk, especially since he’s ready to leave the dying art of boat-building and repair behind. And Scott’s feelings for Jack’s wife, Ellen, only complicate matters. The story’s point of view shifts from chapter to chapter, lending insight into each character in turn as they move around and past each other in an intricate dance of wants, needs, and secrets. With hopes, dreams, love, and money on the line, conflict is inevitable, and no one knows all the other players well enough to prevent escalation or even, perhaps, to skirt disaster. There is an exquisite balance among character study, conflict, and scene here, as the details of the boat’s construction and the area’s history intertwine with plot and character. There are perhaps a few expository sections that go on too long or ring as awkward, but readers should get past these hiccups quickly enough and be richly rewarded with a truly excellent piece of Americana.
A complex and engrossing read about building a boat that’s rich in character and spirit.Pub Date: Sept. 2, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-692-39080-1
Page Count: 566
Publisher: Camerado Press
Review Posted Online: May 6, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.
A violent surfacing of adolescence (which has little in common with Tarkington's earlier, broadly comic, Seventeen) has a compulsive impact.
"Nobody big except me" is the dream world of Holden Caulfield and his first person story is down to the basic, drab English of the pre-collegiate. For Holden is now being bounced from fancy prep, and, after a vicious evening with hall- and roommates, heads for New York to try to keep his latest failure from his parents. He tries to have a wild evening (all he does is pay the check), is terrorized by the hotel elevator man and his on-call whore, has a date with a girl he likes—and hates, sees his 10 year old sister, Phoebe. He also visits a sympathetic English teacher after trying on a drunken session, and when he keeps his date with Phoebe, who turns up with her suitcase to join him on his flight, he heads home to a hospital siege. This is tender and true, and impossible, in its picture of the old hells of young boys, the lonesomeness and tentative attempts to be mature and secure, the awful block between youth and being grown-up, the fright and sickness that humans and their behavior cause the challenging, the dramatization of the big bang. It is a sorry little worm's view of the off-beat of adult pressure, of contemporary strictures and conformity, of sentiment….
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.Pub Date: June 15, 1951
ISBN: 0316769177
Page Count: -
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1951
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
APPRECIATIONS
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
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