Brazilian novelist Pi§on, in her second novel (The Republic of Dreams, 1989) to appear in English, describes a leisurely paced encounter between illusion and reality in a Brazilian backwater in thrall to its dreams. When a letter arrives announcing the return of Caetana, a beautiful circus-star and actress, the small town of Trindade is caught up in a frenzy of anticipation. For 20 years the townspeople, who have survived by feeding on ``the bread of lies, the one warmth that fights off loneliness,'' have dreamt of such a day. Polidoro, the rich cattle-baron, has endured his wife's recriminations by remembering the great love affair he had with Caetana; Giaconda, owner of the local brothel, has similarly been helped by memories of Caetana's friendship; and the lonely misfits, like historian Virgilio, and the ``Three Graces''—the aging prostitutes of the brothel—have found a vicarious pleasure in imagining the happiness that Caetana's return will bring. Caetana, who has nurtured her own dreams, duly arrives, but reality turns out to be thin stuff. Refusing to resume their love affair, Caetana asks only that Polidoro build a theater for her so that she can give a performance to rival that of Maria Callas. The long-awaited performance is a fiasco, shattering everyone's dreams and illusions—but only briefly. For though Caetana leaves abruptly, she promises to come back in another 20 years—``Life to her was suitable only for the stage. Outside this domain everything seemed false''—and the town settles down once more to wait for ``the train of happiness to pull in.'' An insightful meditation on myth and reality, with all the ennui of provincial life vividly evoked, and marred only by the occasional repetitiveness in the telling. But a welcome addition to the Latin American canon.
Pub Date: May 3, 1992
ISBN: 0-394-58997-1
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 1992
BOOK REVIEW
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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