Slim plot, but film fans will adore it.
Glamour-packed first novel by journalist Sherrill (The Buddha from Brooklyn, 2000) about a big-name Hollywood interviewer writing her last profile of a movie star.
Clementine James has written a 20,000-word essay on Erich von Stroheim for Flame magazine that her editor butchers down to 5,000 words. She quits movie biz. But Allegra Coleman, who has made only three movies (the latest being a remake of Antonioni's L’Avventura), demands Clem interview her. Flame offers Clem triple pay. Sticking to Allegra for a week between shoots, Clem sees her as an airhead filled with Buddhist philosophy and the usual narcissistic chatter about acting. Allegra believes she’s a rising star now because the energy of the universe declares it. On Interstate 5, Allegra, at the wheel, keeps eye contact with Clem. Then a crash costs Clem her right eye, while Allegra, for unknown reasons, walks away from the totaled car (read: James Dean’s Porsche) and disappears. As months go by, Allegra is nominated for an Oscar for Sphinxa and suddenly rises into the postmortal heavens of Marilyn Monroe and James Dean, with the public holding candlelight vigils in the Hollywood Bowl. Now Flame, planning an all-Allegra issue, really wants Clem’s Allegra profile. Meanwhile, in the hospital Clem is promised a newly invented Bio-eye from Switzerland. When she’s released, her eye-patch makes her as famous as Allegra and she’s chased by reporters. She goes about interviewing more people tied to Allegra, although not definitely writing the Flame article. That much of the novel has suspense, but Sherrill now lapses into big walk-ons from dead stars who invade Clem’s dreams and have a schizoid daylight reality for her as she goes about LA and Manhattan. These historical figures leave the plot limp for long passages until dozens of them gather at a Hollywood swimming pool in an explosion of chat, beauty, and sighs from oblivion. But where’s Allegra?
Slim plot, but film fans will adore it.Pub Date: Feb. 11, 2003
ISBN: 0-375-50769-8
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2002
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
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.
Sisters work together to solve a child-abandonment case.
Ellie and Julia Cates have never been close. Julia is shy and brainy; Ellie gets by on charm and looks. Their differences must be tossed aside when a traumatized young girl wanders in from the forest into their hometown in Washington. The sisters’ professional skills are put to the test. Julia is a world-renowned child psychologist who has lost her edge. She is reeling from a case that went publicly sour. Though she was cleared of all wrongdoing, Julia’s name was tarnished, forcing her to shutter her Beverly Hills practice. Ellie Barton is the local police chief in Rain Valley, who’s never faced a tougher case. This is her chance to prove she is more than just a fading homecoming queen, but a scarcity of clues and a reluctant victim make locating the girl’s parents nearly impossible. Ellie places an SOS call to her sister; she needs an expert to rehabilitate this wild-child who has been living outside of civilization for years. Confronted with her professional demons, Julia once again has the opportunity to display her talents and salvage her reputation. Hannah (The Things We Do for Love, 2004, etc.) is at her best when writing from the girl’s perspective. The feral wolf-child keeps the reader interested long after the other, transparent characters have grown tiresome. Hannah’s torturously over-written romance passages are stale, but there are surprises in store as the sisters set about unearthing Alice’s past and creating a home for her.
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.Pub Date: March 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-345-46752-3
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2005
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