An underdeveloped, aggressively vague first novel.
A family saga about a gay man dealing with feelings of rejection and neglect.
Dorsey (Businessman First, 2014) traces three generations of an African-American family in this novel, from the early 20th century to the present day. The story focuses first on Estelle, the eldest daughter of Anna and Harrison Cory Sr., who, at age 10, is forced to take over as caregiver for two siblings after the death of their mother. Her father doesn’t particularly want to keep or take care of the children, and he ultimately uses them as a workforce in the home of a wealthy white family, where Estelle is forced to look after more kids. As a young woman, she moves to Baltimore against her father’s wishes, and there, she begins dating a young man named Albrecht Rose, and she marries him after she becomes pregnant with his child. Upset at the prospect of raising another youngster, Estelle wants only to get her daughter into school so that she can begin working and earning her own money—but she quickly becomes pregnant again. Thereafter, she secretly goes on birth control, but then Albrecht convinces her to have yet another child, despite his military career which keeps him constantly away. Seymour, their third and final offspring, is a timid person who clings to his mother as the years go by, despite her refusal to accept the fact that he’s gay and repeated reminders that she never wanted him. Dorsey makes Seymour the main character of the last third of the book, but this soon devolves into an unfocused but highly aggrandizing summary of Seymour’s academic and career accomplishments. The overall story presented here is fictional, but it’s based on a true one, and as a result, it often reads less like a novel than like a therapeutic airing of familial grievances. Throughout the book, the author often avoids conventionally staged scenes and dialogue, instead favoring meandering, highly repetitive summaries of characters’ actions, with blunt pronunciations about who’s good (“Seymour was the most innocent and good-natured of Albrecht and Estelle’s children”), who’s bad, and who’s ugly along the way.
An underdeveloped, aggressively vague first novel.Pub Date: Nov. 2, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-5434-6290-6
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Xlibris
Review Posted Online: March 8, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
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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