A well-written story of an outsider in a house of beauties and problems that are more than skin-deep.
An orphaned teenager moves into her grandmother’s model-filled town house.
In this debut YA novel, newly orphaned Jane Archer moves to New York to live with her grandmother Gigi Towers, founder of a modeling agency. Several of Gigi’s young models live in her house, and the narration rotates among Jane, who has trouble adjusting to upper-class life and Gigi’s high standards; Maya, whose prominent family’s disdain for her modeling career only exacerbates her eating disorders and cutting; and Campbell Tucker, a Southerner who sees her status go from bottom of the heap to it girl over a few months. The models face professional challenges, drug problems, harassment from men in the industry, and tough love from Gigi while Jane slowly settles in and finds her place with the “weirdos” at school and discovers a passion for filmmaking. Tensions increase as Campbell lands her first movie role, and Jane eventually solves the mystery of who in the house has been threatening the model’s career. The book takes a dark turn in the final pages, but by the end, all three protagonists have grown emotionally. Fuson has created an engaging world in Gigi’s town house, with well-developed main characters and a strong supporting cast. Jane’s relationship with Gigi, which begins with open hostility and evolves into mutual respect, is plausible and compelling. The author is clearly knowledgeable about the modeling industry, with its “go-sees” and bookers—and the particular problems that Maya faces as one of the few black models. Although the plot is slow to develop in the opening chapters—in which the audience is reminded several times that Jane is distinctly not the model type—the pacing soon establishes itself, and readers will be turning pages quickly by the midpoint. The prose is solid, and if the theme of models who are more than just their looks is not entirely original, it is still well presented in an enjoyable narrative that will easily hold readers’ attention.
A well-written story of an outsider in a house of beauties and problems that are more than skin-deep.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: 978-1-73371-730-4
Page Count: 132
Publisher: Time Tunnel Media
Review Posted Online: April 29, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
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
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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