A moving, resonant collection of stories that honors its characters’ struggles and passions.
Albanian-American author Hakani presents a trio of heartfelt, interconnected tales about Albanian women.
The author’s first published book in English evocatively reinterprets the sentimental memories of an old family acquaintance and gifted storyteller. Among the women in her family, Hakani says, this elderly woman represented “the times we did not have a chance to live through, the times we looked back at in awe, admiration, and wonder.” The title novella, the most impressive of the group, uses rich, atmospheric detail to recount the lives of an Albanian mother and daughter-in-law, who deal with both the hardships and pleasures of an orthodox, pastoral life. In it, Mariana, a strikingly beautiful woman in the village of Kalasa, lives in an orange grove that she adores. But she finds her life becoming increasingly complicated when her son immigrates alone to America, leaving his own wife, Ana, behind to live with Mariana. After Ana is raped and bears the rapist’s child, the textured, nuanced story becomes a whirlwind of betrayal, misguided passion, obsession, and moral quandary. “Rina” tells of a young widow-turned-seductress who has alluring powers over the village men and of the tragedy and mystery of her death. The final story, “The Awakening,” follows an unlikely friendship between an orphaned, mentally retarded man and a local village woman, for whom he provides farming and caregiving help. Together, they transcend the cruelty of societal limitations to become lovers and life partners, much to the shock and chagrin of the critical villagers. Collectively, Hakani’s profound stories deliver an uplifting, cohesive reading experience filled with intrigue and melodrama, drawing on themes of feminine empowerment and resilience.
A moving, resonant collection of stories that honors its characters’ struggles and passions.Pub Date: April 25, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-4787-5053-6
Page Count: 364
Publisher: Outskirts Press
Review Posted Online: April 30, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2017
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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