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THE TRICKSTER

Intolerance and archetypal horror entwine like snakes in this gripper set in the Canadian Rockies: a first from Scottish TV broadcaster Gray. Sam Hunt, born Sam Hunting Wolf, denies his Kuinchinkic inheritance and language, runs off from his family and reservation at age 15, now lives with whites, and has been happily married for ten years. Sam's secret: He wears an amulet that sets him aside as the shaman who must defend the Siouan tribes against the Tricksteran evil fiend once buried in Wolf Mountain but released from its prison in 1907 when Scottish railroad gangs blew holes in the mountain while building the Great Corkscrew Tunnel. Sam's grandfather and father were also the shamans defending the tribes against the Trickster. Now the Trickster is back and bloodying the slopes where Sam works as a manual groomer for the Silver Ski Company: He grooms snow on bare spots and bad places for skiers. His snappish temper has already cost him five jobs, and this one too is on the line. But Sam has been having blackouts at the very times the Trickster is butchering victims and stuffing hearts up anuses, as well as penises into mouths, when, that is, not tearing folks limb from limb. The Trickster can take human form or the shapes of beasts, but is at heart a fiend made of mud, ice, and stone that eats human flesh. He is, of course, an evil figure from the racial unconscious of both whites and Indians, but he is especially intent on Sam, who denies the Trickster's existence and his own role in fighting him. Without fail, though, police work leads to Sam, who must face his destiny in the Great Corkscrew Tunnel. Marvelously strong on dialogue, Indian lore, and detail of any kind, Gray seems born with muscles and handles herself like a Tyson eager to k.o. King and Koontz. May she instead avoid the bear trap clichÇs of genre fiction and go mainstream.

Pub Date: Aug. 1, 1995

ISBN: 0-385-47786-4

Page Count: 480

Publisher: Doubleday

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1995

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A LITTLE LIFE

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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TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD

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

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