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IN THE NAME OF MERCY

Timely if flat euthanasia novel from Delbanco, head of the University of Michigan's writing program and author, mostly recently, of The Writers' Trade (1989). Weird things are going on in Lakeview, Michigan. Peter Julius, a young physician whose wife has recently died after a long and painful battle with cancer, has been put in charge of the Harley Andrews Hospice, a home for the terminally ill. Although the hospice is a charitable endeavor, endowed by a local millionaire, the notoriety surrounding that other Michigander, Dr. Kevorkian, has put it in the public eye. No one who enters as a patient comes out through the front door, and while this is not exactly a surprise, ugly rumors of pulled plugs and empty syringes start to circulate in town. When Rebecca Forsythe, the Derek Humphrey-like author of Death's Kingdom (a proeuthanasia tract), comes to the hospice to give a seminar on current medical approaches to death, even the staff begins to wonder: Has healing become synonymous with killing? Benefactor Harley Andrews himself has a bad heart and makes no secret either of his wish for a quick end or his fear that a low turnover rate will bankrupt the hospice. There are strange, anonymous letters to the editor of the local paper from a fundamentalist Christian who warns of "abominations" in town; an unhappy affair between Peter and Rebecca; a nurse who falls in love with an AIDS patient (who dies more quickly than anyone expects)—but all of it adds up not so much to a mystery as an essay, or an editorial. Delbanco is so leisurely in his narration that the climax comes as a surprise—not in how it falls together, but that it even takes place. The motive behind this work—i.e., how our understanding of health, life, and death is changing—is too strong for the story it's enclosed in, and ends by smothering it. Strangely dry and academic: more an exercise than a novel.

Pub Date: Sept. 12, 1995

ISBN: 0-446-51711-9

Page Count: 320

Publisher: N/A

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 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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THE THINGS WE DO FOR LOVE

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

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