An often illuminating novel that lays bare the societal constraints faced by generations of women and the stark realities...
Wright (Broken Strings, 2013, etc.) crafts a multigenerational tale centered on the women in one Scottish-American family.
As the novel opens in 1912, Jessie Menzies has just graduated from high school in the small Scottish town of Leven. The festivities are short-lived, however, as she learns that her Aunt Grace has died in the United States, leaving behind a husband and children. In short order, Jessie travels there to help with the kids—a job that has her putting down roots in the Vermont town of Cherry Valley. Jessie starts teaching English to new immigrants and eventually forges a relationship with a Polish man, leading to a daughter, Grace, being born out of wedlock. The story is divided into four parts, and the first two trace Jessie’s story as she builds a life in the small town with assorted, lively friends and family. Victoria, one of the “babies” Jessie came to look after, narrates the third part, set mostly during World War II. Tired of life in small-town America, Vicky has an affair with a married college professor and becomes a pilot to help the war effort in Europe. The story of Grace, Jessie’s love child, makes up the last part of the novel. Allusions to Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland surface throughout; Vicky, for example, with her sheer will and zest for life, is depicted as the story’s “Red Queen.” But while Lewis Carroll might have stated in that tale that “Queens never make bargains,” the author effectively shows how the Menzies women have no such luck. Constrained by the demands of family, time and place, even the one weapon they have—sexuality—often backfires. Yet Wright shows how they constantly adapt to unyielding situations and somehow manage to make their places in society. The novel ends just after the end of World War II, a celebratory time that made way for new beginnings; the story concludes with this ray of hope as the next generation gets ready to take over the spotlight.
An often illuminating novel that lays bare the societal constraints faced by generations of women and the stark realities they bore with grace.Pub Date: April 3, 2014
ISBN: 978-1935922476
Page Count: 234
Publisher: Red Barn Books of Vermont
Review Posted Online: June 2, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2014
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.
Life lessons.
Angie Malone, the youngest of a big, warm Italian-American family, returns to her Pacific Northwest hometown to wrestle with various midlife disappointments: her divorce, Papa’s death, a downturn in business at the family restaurant, and, above all, her childlessness. After several miscarriages, she, a successful ad exec, and husband Conlan, a reporter, befriended a pregnant young girl and planned to adopt her baby—and then the birth mother changed her mind. Angie and Conlan drifted apart and soon found they just didn’t love each other anymore. Metaphorically speaking, “her need for a child had been a high tide, an overwhelming force that drowned them. A year ago, she could have kicked to the surface but not now.” Sadder but wiser, Angie goes to work in the struggling family restaurant, bickering with Mama over updating the menu and replacing the ancient waitress. Soon, Angie befriends another young girl, Lauren Ribido, who’s eager to learn and desperately needs a job. Lauren’s family lives on the wrong side of the tracks, and her mother is a promiscuous alcoholic, but Angie knows nothing of this sad story and welcomes Lauren into the DeSaria family circle. The girl listens in, wide-eyed, as the sisters argue and make wisecracks and—gee-whiz—are actually nice to each other. Nothing at all like her relationship with her sluttish mother, who throws Lauren out when boyfriend David, en route to Stanford, gets her pregnant. Will Lauren, who’s just been accepted to USC, let Angie adopt her baby? Well, a bit of a twist at the end keeps things from becoming too predictable.
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.Pub Date: July 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-345-46750-7
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2004
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
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