Not quite as dynamic as Sebastian’s more explicitly political work, the novel is still a compelling portrait of desire in...
A young man's romantic and sexual exploits are examined from various angles in this novel first published in 1933.
In the first section of Sebastian’s (For Two Thousand Years, 2017) second novel to appear in English, a young Romanian medical student arrives at a guesthouse in the Alps. He has just completed his exams in Paris and has come to take a rest. Instead, he becomes involved with three different women at the guesthouse—romantically and sexually—and, all in all, there’s little rest to be had. His name is Stefan Valeriu. In the novel’s second section, time shifts forward and perspective shifts sideways. Valeriu is now narrating—not his own exploits, this time, but the sad situation of a girl he once knew, with “an impoverished, joyless life.” The novel shifts twice more after this: First there is a letter to Valeriu from a woman to whom he has apparently proclaimed his love; and, last of all, Valeriu returns to the first person to describe an earlier affair with a former acrobat. Sections are titled after the women they describe: Émilie, Maria, Arabela, and so on. But even though the novel takes as its main subject the romantic entanglements of its main character, there is something else, too, seething beneath this current. The novel was written in the years between the two world wars, and though no explicit reference to politics or history is ever made, the shadows of the wars are felt quite forcefully in each discrete section. Sebastian himself was a Jew from Romania who wrote openly about his experiences. Eventually, his friends abandoned him. He survived the Second World War only to die in a freak accident in 1945. Sebastian’s other, perhaps stronger, work deals more directly with the legacy of the wars, but this novel is no throwaway, either: It’s an edgy account of sexuality, desire, and the strictures of contemporary relationships.
Not quite as dynamic as Sebastian’s more explicitly political work, the novel is still a compelling portrait of desire in its many convoluted manifestations.Pub Date: March 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-59051-954-7
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Other Press
Review Posted Online: Dec. 10, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2019
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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