A striking tale of coming-of-age, loss, sexuality, and self-discovery, filled with rich characters.
Garvin depicts the splendor and squalor of both the natural and human worlds in this debut literary novel.
Zachariah Aaron Nance at first appears to be set up for a simple life. Born and raised in Durango, Colorado, he begins life knowing the feeling of dirt under his fingernails, sweat on his brow, and God in his heart. His childhood is split between the natural world and the town and his family. Zach’s father is a salt-of-the-earth type, taking odd jobs across local farms to support the family financially, while Zach’s mother’s strong ties to the Baptist church and the community support them spiritually. Zach’s trials and tribulations also at first seem like the expected hazards of being a growing boy—trouble with school, an eye for mischief, and a hint of the angst that comes of being a middle child. But while there’s youthful joy in small-town living, there’s also poison under its skin in the forms of poverty, alcoholism, racism, and homophobia. When tragedy strikes the family, his father withdraws into drinking, his mother into religion, and Zach loses his fragile grip on the world as he struggles with this fractured clan, the fortitude and responsibility it requires, and his own identity. The writing in this novel is excellent, a mix of clear, no-nonsense storytelling to move the narrative forward and vibrant, nigh-poetic language to describe the play of sunlight, water, dust, greenery, and human beings that make up Zach’s universe (“Colorado mornings on the brink of spring begin with a deep purple reflection rising low on the horizon. The lavender glow spreads out and up as dawn slowly consumes the fading night....The season’s bitter freeze begins its gradual thaw, and the forest floor and frozen tundra welcome the new warmth”). At the same time, the story bravely and honestly delves into the existential questions and trials of faith that Zach undergoes, from a childhood fever dream where he’s visited by Jesus to his more conscious realizations of the unfairness of the world and what God’s role in such a place could be. Finally, straightforward, genuine dialogue gives voice and individuality to the vivid cast of characters. Zach’s joy, pain, longing, and isolation are real and palpable throughout, and every piece of the story and setting only furthers the life and experience bled onto the page.
A striking tale of coming-of-age, loss, sexuality, and self-discovery, filled with rich characters.Pub Date: May 1, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-5194-1473-1
Page Count: 308
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: July 21, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2016
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
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.
A violent surfacing of adolescence (which has little in common with Tarkington's earlier, broadly comic, Seventeen) has a compulsive impact.
"Nobody big except me" is the dream world of Holden Caulfield and his first person story is down to the basic, drab English of the pre-collegiate. For Holden is now being bounced from fancy prep, and, after a vicious evening with hall- and roommates, heads for New York to try to keep his latest failure from his parents. He tries to have a wild evening (all he does is pay the check), is terrorized by the hotel elevator man and his on-call whore, has a date with a girl he likes—and hates, sees his 10 year old sister, Phoebe. He also visits a sympathetic English teacher after trying on a drunken session, and when he keeps his date with Phoebe, who turns up with her suitcase to join him on his flight, he heads home to a hospital siege. This is tender and true, and impossible, in its picture of the old hells of young boys, the lonesomeness and tentative attempts to be mature and secure, the awful block between youth and being grown-up, the fright and sickness that humans and their behavior cause the challenging, the dramatization of the big bang. It is a sorry little worm's view of the off-beat of adult pressure, of contemporary strictures and conformity, of sentiment….
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.Pub Date: June 15, 1951
ISBN: 0316769177
Page Count: -
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1951
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
APPRECIATIONS
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