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
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
Once again, Hilderbrand displays her gift for making us care most about her least likable characters.
Hilderbrand’s latest cautionary tale exposes the toxic—and hilarious—impact of gossip on even the most sophisticated of islands.
Eddie and Grace Pancik are known for their beautiful Nantucket home and grounds, financed with the profits from Eddie’s thriving real estate company (thriving before the crash of 2008, that is). Grace raises pedigreed hens and, with the help of hunky landscape architect Benton Coe, has achieved a lush paradise of fowl-friendly foliage. The Panciks’ teenage girls, Allegra and Hope, suffer invidious comparisons of their looks and sex appeal, although they're identical twins. The Panciks’ friends the Llewellyns (Madeline, a blocked novelist, and her airline-pilot husband, Trevor) invested $50,000, the lion’s share of Madeline’s last advance, in Eddie’s latest development. But Madeline, hard-pressed to come up with catalog copy, much less a new novel, is living in increasingly straightened circumstances, at least by Nantucket standards: she can only afford $2,000 per month on the apartment she rents in desperate hope that “a room of her own” will prime the creative pump. Construction on Eddie’s spec houses has stalled, thanks to the aforementioned crash. Grace, who has been nursing a crush on Benton for some time, gives in and a torrid affair ensues, which she ill-advisedly confides to Madeline after too many glasses of Screaming Eagle. With her agent and publisher dropping dire hints about clawing back her advance and Eddie “temporarily” unable to return the 50K, what’s a writer to do but to appropriate Grace’s adultery as fictional fodder? When Eddie is seen entering her apartment (to ask why she rented from a rival realtor), rumors spread about him and Madeline, and after the rival realtor sneaks a look at Madeline’s rough draft (which New York is hotly anticipating as “the Playboy Channel meets HGTV”), the island threatens to implode with prurient snark. No one is spared, not even Hilderbrand herself, “that other Nantucket novelist,” nor this magazine, “the notoriously cranky Kirkus.”
Once again, Hilderbrand displays her gift for making us care most about her least likable characters.Pub Date: June 16, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-316-33452-5
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: May 20, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2015
PERSPECTIVES
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