Raw yet gripping exploration of mental illness.
In this debut novel, Harry Taylor recounts his mistaken marriage to a schizophrenic, detailing her “Voice” and mercenary, mentally unstable family.
Harry, who was in between college and law school in 1969, met younger Terri through a cousin and married her in his middle age. She admitted to having mental issues, but Harry was assured by her doctor that these were controlled by medication; thus, as expressed in the novel’s first chapter heading, “The Prognosis Is Good.” Harry soon found out this was a misdiagnosis, since Terri became hostile about having sex, intensely concerned about his money, and, worst of all, obsessive in her desire to kill her parents, particularly her mother, from whom she likely inherited her mental illness. Harry began to realize that Terri was in full sway to what she described as her “Voice.” His first-person account provides a picture of what these racing thoughts were like and how he initially wanted to help Terri but soon felt helpless and then resolved upon divorce. He ended up battling Terri’s parents in court proceedings since they had welcomed him taking over Terri’s medical costs and pushed for a big settlement. He finally extricated himself but is now lonely and shell-shocked by the experience. Terri and her family met even more tragic ends. Author Malady seems very likely to be a pseudonym for someone who has confronted similar circumstances. Regardless, the author captures the horror and pain of such a predicament. The “Voice” chapters are particularly striking, engendering surprising sympathy for the troublesome Terri. The narrative is undercut a bit by its rambling style, which has some digressive and seemingly nonchronological sequences, as well as its dwelling on money grievances; both issues dilute the work’s larger, more important discussion about handling mental illness. Still, this account offers plenty of fascinating documentarylike moments, not least of which is the author’s intriguing assertion that “the source of religious inspiration might be mental illness.”
Raw yet gripping exploration of mental illness.Pub Date: March 25, 2015
ISBN: 978-1507650523
Page Count: 110
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: May 8, 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
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PROFILES
PERSPECTIVES
A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.
Pub Date: July 11, 1960
ISBN: 0060935464
Page Count: 323
Publisher: Lippincott
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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