A bittersweet tale that highlights the sacrifices people make for love, and at what cost.
The moving story of a woman holding on to romance while trying to save her troubled lover.
An ambitious work, Wallace’s debut novel tackles difficult subjects, including a soldier’s hidden scars from battle and the devastation of a hometown spiraling into economic disarray. Celeste grew up on tales her mother told her about Detroit being “the doe-eyed, fresh-faced belle of the nation’s ball.” However, as Celeste reached adulthood and the economy collapsed, her city “declined into a gaunt, overlooked old woman whose stringy hair was sown with weeds.” This dark backdrop sets the scene for an even bigger struggle when she meets Eddie, an Iraq War veteran whose overwhelming PTSD makes for a rocky relationship. As Celeste continues to fall for Eddie, hoping to cure him of his dark moods, she begins to suspect that there’s more to him than what she sees. Suspicions of him having an affair as well as dealing drugs begin to grow when she thinks she spots Eddie buying drugs from a nurse. Celeste’s concerns for her failing town and her secretive boyfriend come together when she learns that drug trafficking is at the heart of Detroit’s destruction. Yet she becomes even more determined to carve out a life with her boyfriend, although it means leaving her hometown and friends behind as she and Eddie relocate to Hawaii. Eddie chases his dream of opening a dive shop and reconnects with his young daughter, Rosalinda, while Celeste is forced to choose what will ultimately make her happy. Celeste’s tendency to lose herself in the people around her makes her a sympathetic, likable character, and her story, usually told in a straightforward manner, also features twists that take surprising and touching turns. Her complicated relationship with Eddie makes for an original romantic tale that’s timely and memorable.
A bittersweet tale that highlights the sacrifices people make for love, and at what cost.Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2013
ISBN: 978-0985420703
Page Count: 340
Publisher: Road Angel Media
Review Posted Online: Feb. 25, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2013
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
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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