More historical tonnage by the author of Mary Queen of Scots and the Isles (1992), etc. Again, George highlights the dangerous vagaries of love and lust in the career of one born to the purple. Here, politics and empire-building by the fabled Egyptian queen (69 B.C.30 B.C.) simmer on the back burner while Cleopatra is engulfed by two mighty lovers: Julius Caesar and Marc Antony. The former, ``master of the world,'' arrives in Egypt after Cleopatra has been deposed by wily siblings. Legend has it—as does George—that the nubile future queen chose to be smuggled secretly to Caesar's boudoir in a rug. After an unfurling and some shrewd diplomatic chat, lovemaking with this ``courteous and elegant man'' beckons thrillingly. Then follow idylls in exotically beautiful eastern landscapes and the queen's pregnancy (she bears Caesar a son). Besotted, curious, but wary of Caesar's homeland, Cleopatra joins Caesar in Rome, witnesses Triumphs (victory parades), blood sports, and some nasty political maneuvering. Then come the Ides and Cleopatra is ``widowed.'' Enter Marc Antony a few years later, a military hero who, with Caesar's heir, Octavian, defeated Caesar's assassins, and with Octavian rules Rome. Ah, Antony!—he of ``bodily perfection.'' The queen will have three children by Antony, and continue her campaign for the return of old Egyptian territories. There are dreams of glory with nobly intentioned Antony, but all too soon comes the horror of defeat and parting. Cleopatra outwits Octavian only by her self-inflicted death. Unlike George's Mary, based on that sovereign's letters and diaries, Cleopatra's voice is lost in the sands of time, and its echo here is curiously bland. As for the power boys—Caesar and Antony—both lack the steely tang of Colleen McCullough's portraits. Still, Cleopatra's story has a timeless fascination. (First printing of 200,000; Literary Guild selection; mini-series rights to Hallmark/ABC TV; $150,000 ad/promo; author tour)
Pub Date: May 8, 1997
ISBN: 0-312-16700-8
Page Count: 976
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 1997
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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