Decidedly one-note, however richly sung.
A cellist attending the funeral of her renowned ex-husband is beset by conflicting emotions, in this impressionistic fiction by award-winning Mexican author Glantz (Family Tree, 1991, etc.).
Nora Garcia has not visited the dusty village where she lived with Juan, a world-class pianist, since their divorce many years before, but news of his heart attack and death has brought her there one last time. Estranged from old friends attending the wake, unknown to the others, Nora wanders between the garden and the living room where Juan’s corpse lies, overhearing mourners wonder aloud whom “they should offer their heartfelt condolences to.” Thus isolated, she remembers the past she shared with Juan, the music they loved and the pontifications he often delivered late at night on subjects such as the careers of Giovanni Pergolesi and Glenn Gould. Very little happens here beyond the wake, the funeral procession (complete with mariachis and a beggar with a bandaged foot) up a rocky path to a small church, and the burial. Otherwise, the exposition is confined to Nora’s circular meditations on, among many other things, the physiology of myocardial infarction and its metaphorical extension, a broken heart. Sometimes this theme-and-variation technique succeeds, and the story evokes an eloquent mood of loss as it considers the power of memory as filtered through grief. More often, however, Nora’s mental meanderings, especially when unnecessarily protracted (subjects include John Singer Sergeant’s portrait of Isabella Stewart Gardner and Dostoyevsky’s The Idiot), seem to reflect the author’s interests rather than the development of her character’s epiphany. Furthermore, the indulgent misuse of colons and parentheses, scattered annoyingly throughout the text like inscrutable emotions, undermines the narrative authority necessary when asking a reader to navigate a work cast entirely in stream-of-consciousness.
Decidedly one-note, however richly sung.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2005
ISBN: 1-931896-23-2
Page Count: 124
Publisher: Curbstone Press
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2005
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
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The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with...
Talk-show queen takes tumble as millions jeer.
Nora Bridges is a wildly popular radio spokesperson for family-first virtues, but her loyal listeners don't know that she walked out on her husband and teenaged daughters years ago and didn't look back. Now that a former lover has sold racy pix of naked Nora and horny himself to a national tabloid, her estranged daughter Ruby, an unsuccessful stand-up comic in Los Angeles, has been approached to pen a tell-all. Greedy for the fat fee she's been promised, Ruby agrees and heads for the San Juan Islands, eager to get reacquainted with the mom she plans to betray. Once in the family homestead, nasty Ruby alternately sulks and glares at her mother, who is temporarily wheelchair-bound as a result of a post-scandal car crash. Uncaring, Ruby begins writing her side of the story when she's not strolling on the beach with former sweetheart Dean Sloan, the son of wealthy socialites who basically ignored him and his gay brother Eric. Eric, now dying of cancer and also in a wheelchair, has returned to the island. This dismal threesome catch up on old times, recalling their childhood idylls on the island. After Ruby's perfect big sister Caroline shows up, there's another round of heartfelt talk. Nora gradually reveals the truth about her unloving husband and her late father's alcoholism, which led her to seek the approval of others at the cost of her own peace of mind. And so on. Ruby is aghast to discover that she doesn't know everything after all, but Dean offers her subdued comfort. Happy endings await almost everyone—except for readers of this nobly preachy snifflefest.
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with syrupy platitudes about life and love.Pub Date: March 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-609-60737-5
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2001
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