Despite some promising subplots, this historical tale only skims the emotional surface of two of the 20th century’s most...
In Roy’s (Once Upon a Time in Venice, 2007) novella, a Jewish family bears witness to Nazism and apartheid.
“[I]t’s hard to believe that little man will be anything,” says teenage Inge to her identical twin sister, Eva, during a 1932 concert at the Berlin Philharmonie. “I think he is somewhat comical…don’t you?” Of course, the man in question is no laughing matter: over the next six years, Adolf Hitler will transform the “cultural jewel” of Berlin into a city ravaged by anti-Semitism and teetering on the brink of war. Initially, none of Eva and Inge’s family members know what to make of the Nazis; their parents, Oskar and Helene, assume that the threat will blow over, while their younger brother Max urges everyone to flee the country. After surviving the horrific Kristallnacht pogrom in November 1938, the family wisely heeds Max’s advice. Using his connections to the resistance movement, he manages to sneak them out of Germany—first to Antwerp, Belgium, and then on a globe-trotting journey that takes them to France and Rio de Janeiro. In 1944, the family settles in Cape Town, South Africa, where they finally enjoy calm and prosperity. The new restrictions of apartheid, however, force Eva, Inge, and the others to choose between fighting against oppression, fleeing once more, or protecting themselves by ignoring injustice. Roy’s narrative, based on her grandparents’ own flight from Nazi-era Germany to Cape Town, often feels assembled from clichés rather than specific, intimate details. Too often, the prose and dialogue rely on platitudes (“It was a constant and painful sight to watch human beings being cruel to other human beings”) and awkward exposition (“It’s ludicrous that Hitler blames the Jews for taking over the country, yet we are only one percent of the population”), which makes the story feel secondhand and never lived-in. Fortunately, the lives of Roy’s supporting cast feel more immediate; for example, the chapters focusing on Trudy, the twins’ best friend–turned-Nazi; and Zoe, the family’s South African maid, offer a more challenging, richer reading experience.
Despite some promising subplots, this historical tale only skims the emotional surface of two of the 20th century’s most devastating chapters.Pub Date: Sept. 7, 2013
ISBN: 978-0615846682
Page Count: 222
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: March 17, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
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
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