by Michael DiMercurio ‧ RELEASE DATE: Aug. 18, 1992
Last-gasp cold war hostilities provide an American submarine commander the opportunity to avenge his father's death. Authentic naval detail distinguishes the debut of the author, an Annapolis graduate and submarine sailor. The plot-generating treachery at the highest levels of the former Soviet navy is a standard military thriller device, but the firsthand feel for life aboard a nuclear hunter-killer sub—as well as for warfare under the polar icecap—is fresh and welcome in this not-too-technothriller. At a time when the superpowers are supposedly dismantling their superweapons, second-generation submarine skipper Michael Pacino speeds U.S.S. Devilfish to the Arctic to sniff out a huge and remarkably stealthy new Russian sub. Commanding the fleet submarine Kalingrad over the nominal control of the boat's unhappy captain is unreconstructed Bolshevik Admiral Alexi Novskoyy—who's about to implement his private plan to knock international relations back to the late 40's with an unprovoked attack on the US. It's not his first time at wielding his own foreign policy. As a sub skipper back in the 70's, Novskoyy, without provocation, torpedoed an American boat that found his polar hiding place. The American captain in that incident was Michael Pacino's father. Novskoyy is not completely alone in his plot. He's got a mole placed at the very top of the Pentagon, an Air Force general who keeps assuring the President that the sudden appearance of the complete Russian northern submarine fleet off the American East Coast is just an exercise. The President may be buying that story, but the admiral in charge of America's Atlantic submarine fleet, Pacino's mentor and godfather, is having none of it. He sends his godson orders to do whatever may be necessary to call the Russians to heel. Tense and, when at sea, chillingly realistic. There's a hefty glossary at the end, but DiMercurio's action needs no technical assistance.
Pub Date: Aug. 18, 1992
ISBN: 1-55611-291-2
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Donald Fine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1992
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by Hanya Yanagihara ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 10, 2015
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.
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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
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by Kristin Hannah ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 1, 2004
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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