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The Inducements of Brazen Lovers Behind the Mask

An engaging story of an immigrant’s journey to growth and maturity.

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Seck’s debut novella presents a young woman’s struggle with unrequited love—and her eventual triumph.

“What can be as horrible as loving someone who doesn’t love you back?” asks young Bijou as this story opens. She left the warm, familiar comforts of her home in Guinea, Conakry, West Africa, where her friends and neighbors were like family, and was thrust into the mysterious, complex world of adolescence in the United States. Bijou’s parents enroll her in Washington I.M., a rigorously academic institution with unwritten rules and a rigid social structure. As a result, Bijou is lonely; her bus driver is one of her only friends. However, she soon falls for the good-looking Gracious, a young man who’s fated to break her heart. Her love for him shocks her and she finds herself defenseless against his charms despite his attachment to his girlfriend—the wealthy, beautiful, and arrogant Bee, the popular students’ ringleader. Bee sizes up her competition and sets out to destroy Bijou by accusing her of theft and turning other students against her. But Bijou remains hopeful despite her isolation, and she soon finds reassurance and comfort in Alex, a fellow student whose love and admiration helps heal the emotional wounds that Gracious inflicted upon her. This coming-of-age tale traces the trajectory of a fragile young woman as she becomes stronger and more confident. Bijou’s voice is raw and convincing as she uses the halting English of a recent immigrant. Her story, while familiar, takes on a new edge as she searches for her own identity while also struggling with culture shock. Her tale of rejection and acceptance is also a story of racial tension and the cruelty of the intolerant. The chapters read like stream-of-consciousness pieces from Bijou’s diary in which she compellingly describes her feelings. The portrayal of her process as she learns to respect herself makes this a rewarding, important read for adolescents everywhere.

An engaging story of an immigrant’s journey to growth and maturity.

Pub Date: May 8, 2014

ISBN: 978-1499005226

Page Count: 74

Publisher: Xlibris

Review Posted Online: July 17, 2015

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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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