A sometimes-vivid but ultimately forgettable glimpse into the coal-mining industry and the men and women who work in it, due...
This gritty debut novel, set in the fictitious southern Appalachian town of Coalton, chronicles the mundanities and political machinations of life in a coal-mining community.
Itkonen’s storyline doesn’t follow any one particular character as much as it does the unfolding events in a small town and its surroundings. The diverse cast features a wide range of people, including train-riding hoboes looking for work in the mines, a morally bankrupt coal-company CEO who will do anything to make his mines productive, and his disgruntled employees plotting revenge. Larry Miller, the head of the International Coal Company, Inc., is arguably the most fully realized and intriguing character in the book, as much of the plot revolves around his unethical actions to make his company more profitable. They include creating false documents to steal land from a beloved local businessman, gaining permit approvals from an Army Corps of Engineers regional director by using illegal drugs, and placing a spy in his own mines to ferret out pro-union workers. However, the overall story becomes a bit contrived when a group of Russian gangsters infiltrates the town, with a plan to kidnap and ransom one or both of Miller’s daughters. Indeed, the lack of a clear, identifiable plot thread throughout markedly muddles the narrative momentum and, with so many two-dimensional characters, it makes the novel a difficult one to get into. The novel is well-written and vividly imagined, with some passages that immerse readers in the story: “Most mornings brought fresh air to Coalton, as cool and clean mountain air descended from the weathered peaks that encircled the town, flushing the stale and dusty atmosphere downhill to Virginia.” However, its lack of sympathetic main characters ends up making it a strangely detached, emotionally flat reading experience. In the end, the rich backdrop of the rural coal town—with its abject poverty, black market moonshine, brothels and Pentecostal churches—is more memorable than the cast of characters that inhabit it.
A sometimes-vivid but ultimately forgettable glimpse into the coal-mining industry and the men and women who work in it, due to superficial characterization.Pub Date: Nov. 24, 2014
ISBN: 978-1495968310
Page Count: 458
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2015
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
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Dated sermonizing on career versus motherhood, and conflict driven by characters’ willed helplessness, sap this tale of...
Lifelong, conflicted friendship of two women is the premise of Hannah’s maudlin latest (Magic Hour, 2006, etc.), again set in Washington State.
Tallulah “Tully” Hart, father unknown, is the daughter of a hippie, Cloud, who makes only intermittent appearances in her life. Tully takes refuge with the family of her “best friend forever,” Kate Mularkey, who compares herself unfavorably with Tully, in regards to looks and charisma. In college, “TullyandKate” pledge the same sorority and major in communications. Tully has a life goal for them both: They will become network TV anchorwomen. Tully lands an internship at KCPO-TV in Seattle and finagles a producing job for Kate. Kate no longer wishes to follow Tully into broadcasting and is more drawn to fiction writing, but she hesitates to tell her overbearing friend. Meanwhile a love triangle blooms at KCPO: Hard-bitten, irresistibly handsome, former war correspondent Johnny is clearly smitten with Tully. Expecting rejection, Kate keeps her infatuation with Johnny secret. When Tully lands a reporting job with a Today-like show, her career shifts into hyperdrive. Johnny and Kate had started an affair once Tully moved to Manhattan, and when Kate gets pregnant with daughter Marah, they marry. Kate is content as a stay-at-home mom, but frets about being Johnny’s second choice and about her unrealized writing ambitions. Tully becomes Seattle’s answer to Oprah. She hires Johnny, which spells riches for him and Kate. But Kate’s buttons are fully depressed by pitched battles over slutwear and curfews with teenaged Marah, who idolizes her godmother Tully. In an improbable twist, Tully invites Kate and Marah to resolve their differences on her show, only to blindside Kate by accusing her, on live TV, of overprotecting Marah. The BFFs are sundered. Tully’s latest attempt to salvage Cloud fails: The incorrigible, now geriatric hippie absconds once more. Just as Kate develops a spine, she’s given some devastating news. Will the friends reconcile before it’s too late?
Dated sermonizing on career versus motherhood, and conflict driven by characters’ willed helplessness, sap this tale of poignancy.Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2008
ISBN: 978-0-312-36408-3
Page Count: 496
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2007
BOOK TO SCREEN
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