A thoroughly entertaining rendition of one woman’s search for belonging.
A young woman inherits an apartment from a total stranger and tries to figure out how she is connected to the person who bequeathed it.
Meena Dave lost her parents in a tragic accident when she was a child. Ever since, she’s refused to get close to others, always keeping people at arm’s length. She lives as a nomad, working as a photojournalist and traveling constantly for work. She’s therefore quite puzzled when a lawyer informs her that she has inherited an apartment from a woman she’s never met. The apartment in the Back Bay area of Boston is part of a building called the Engineer’s House, which was purchased decades earlier by an Indian immigrant. Each of the building’s apartments is occupied by other descendants of Indian immigrants, and Meena wonders if she, as a woman with dark skin but unknown background, might have a familial connection to the woman who left her the apartment. After learning she can neither sell nor sublet the home for six months, Meena decides to move in while she tries to uncover the mysteries of her past. She starts building relationships with the other people in the building and also discovers notes inside the apartment that have apparently been left for her to find. The longer she stays, the more connected she feels to the building’s other residents and to her past. Told from Meena’s perspective, the book has a light feeling, but it examines deeper issues like loneliness, abandonment, and cultural expectations. Through Meena’s interactions with her new neighbors, the author explores what constitutes a family and a home. With fascinating details about photojournalism, communal apartment living, and the experiences of Indian nationals who immigrated to Boston in the early 20th century, the novel illustrates the unconventional ways in which people attach to others in unfamiliar surroundings. Although the narrative is sometimes bogged down by unnecessary details, the supporting characters, with intertwined and nuanced histories, add richness to the absorbing story.
A thoroughly entertaining rendition of one woman’s search for belonging.Pub Date: June 1, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-5420-3907-9
Page Count: -
Publisher: Lake Union Publishing
Review Posted Online: April 12, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2022
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
"Don't go into the woods" takes on unsettling new meaning in Moore's blend of domestic drama and crime novel.
Many years after her older brother, Bear, went missing, Barbara Van Laar vanishes from the same sleepaway camp he did, leading to dark, bitter truths about her wealthy family.
One morning in 1975 at Camp Emerson—an Adirondacks summer camp owned by her family—it's discovered that 13-year-old Barbara isn't in her bed. A problem case whose unhappily married parents disdain her goth appearance and "stormy" temperament, Barbara is secretly known by one bunkmate to have slipped out every night after bedtime. But no one has a clue where's she permanently disappeared to, firing speculation that she was taken by a local serial killer known as Slitter. As Jacob Sluiter, he was convicted of 11 murders in the 1960s and recently broke out of prison. He's the one, people say, who should have been prosecuted for Bear's abduction, not a gardener who was framed. Leave it to the young and unproven assistant investigator, Judy Luptack, to press forward in uncovering the truth, unswayed by her bullying father and male colleagues who question whether women are "cut out for this work." An unsavory group portrait of the Van Laars emerges in which the children's father cruelly abuses their submissive mother, who is so traumatized by the loss of Bear—and the possible role she played in it—that she has no love left for her daughter. Picking up on the themes of families in search of themselves she explored in Long Bright River (2020), Moore draws sympathy to characters who have been subjected to spousal, parental, psychological, and physical abuse. As rich in background detail and secondary mysteries as it is, this ever-expansive, intricate, emotionally engaging novel never seems overplotted. Every piece falls skillfully into place and every character, major and minor, leaves an imprint.
"Don't go into the woods" takes on unsettling new meaning in Moore's blend of domestic drama and crime novel.Pub Date: July 2, 2024
ISBN: 9780593418918
Page Count: 496
Publisher: Riverhead
Review Posted Online: April 13, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2024
PERSPECTIVES
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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