May prompt catch-up reading among the uninitiated.
Continuing rags-to-riches saga of Annette Goode Davis, her best friend Rhoda and the exasperating men, parents and children in their lives.
In this fifth of Monroe’s God series (God Ain’t Blind, 2009, etc.), Annette, 47, appears to have finally surmounted her destitute and traumatized childhood. She’s a successful collection agent, happily married to childhood sweetheart Pee Wee, the most prosperous black barber in Richland, Ohio. Their 11-year-old daughter Charlotte is well behaved and popular, even if she prefers pizza to collard greens. Annette is still surrounded by the wacky supporting cast Monroe introduced in the first book (God Don’t Like Ugly, 2000). Her mother, the now-elderly Muh’Dear, has reunited with Annette’s father, whose desertion of the family (in Ugly) for a white woman led to his family’s impoverishment and subsequent troubles. Scary Mary, the semi-retired madam who sheltered and occasionally employed Annette and Muh’Dear during their lean times, is still Richland’s go-to rumor-monger. But Annette ignores Mary’s hints that stalwart Pee Wee is planning to abscond with his new light-skinned manicurist, Little Leg Lizzie (so named because of her withered leg, the result of polio). Irony of ironies, Annette herself had suggested hiring Lizzie, to give Pee Wee an edge over a rival upstart barbershop, and to help Lizzie overcome her shyness. At Annette’s suggestion, Lizzie has a makeover, and the newly glam nail stylist soon has the barbershop clientele—and proprietor—wrapped around her cuticle trimmer. When Pee Wee leaves, Annette retaliates by taking up with former fling Jacob, but he turns out to be an abusive deadbeat. Meanwhile, Rhoda’s spoiled diva daughter Jade has returned from yet another out-of-state husband hunt with latest conquest Vernie, whom she doesn’t hesitate to batter when he’s too slow to obey her commands. Much back story from previous installments unduly burdens this narrative, despite the pleasure of watching Annette and Rhoda soldier on, wisecracks at the ready.
May prompt catch-up reading among the uninitiated.Pub Date: June 1, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-7582-3859-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Dafina/Kensington
Review Posted Online: Dec. 27, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2010
BOOK REVIEW
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
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.
Life lessons.
Angie Malone, the youngest of a big, warm Italian-American family, returns to her Pacific Northwest hometown to wrestle with various midlife disappointments: her divorce, Papa’s death, a downturn in business at the family restaurant, and, above all, her childlessness. After several miscarriages, she, a successful ad exec, and husband Conlan, a reporter, befriended a pregnant young girl and planned to adopt her baby—and then the birth mother changed her mind. Angie and Conlan drifted apart and soon found they just didn’t love each other anymore. Metaphorically speaking, “her need for a child had been a high tide, an overwhelming force that drowned them. A year ago, she could have kicked to the surface but not now.” Sadder but wiser, Angie goes to work in the struggling family restaurant, bickering with Mama over updating the menu and replacing the ancient waitress. Soon, Angie befriends another young girl, Lauren Ribido, who’s eager to learn and desperately needs a job. Lauren’s family lives on the wrong side of the tracks, and her mother is a promiscuous alcoholic, but Angie knows nothing of this sad story and welcomes Lauren into the DeSaria family circle. The girl listens in, wide-eyed, as the sisters argue and make wisecracks and—gee-whiz—are actually nice to each other. Nothing at all like her relationship with her sluttish mother, who throws Lauren out when boyfriend David, en route to Stanford, gets her pregnant. Will Lauren, who’s just been accepted to USC, let Angie adopt her baby? Well, a bit of a twist at the end keeps things from becoming too predictable.
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.Pub Date: July 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-345-46750-7
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2004
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