A guilty-pleasure page-turner despite its obvious flaws.
Brown revisits the Winstons of her debut, The Shirt Off His Back (2001); the tight-knit family must once again battle queen bitch Catherine Hawkins.
Seven years ago, Catherine fought Terry Winston for child custody (really just a ploy to improve her image—yes, the woman’s that cold). She lost and has rarely seen her twin girls Alisa and Ariana since. Having raised the girls single-handedly since their birth, Terry is now married to Jackie, and the family includes her twins and Terry and Jackie’s own son. They are a happy, prosperous African-American family in Dallas, but just wait until Catherine gets back on the scene to ruin everything. In the intervening years she has parlayed her business success into a multinational empire, backstabbing and dirty dealing all the way into an L.A. mansion, a private jet and boy toys at the ready. But now Catherine needs a kidney transplant, and while money can’t cure her, her daughters can. She shows up on the girls’ prom night to share the special occasion, but really to see which of the two she can manipulate into becoming a donor. Proud, furious Alisa speaks her mind, but softer Ariana agrees to become a donor, secretly hoping that this act of filial selflessness will inspire Catherine’s love. Fat chance, and everyone knows it (especially outraged Jackie), but it can’t be denied that Ariana’s kindness is inspiring. A few subplots are tossed into the drama: Catherine is planning on major layoffs and outsourcing, making a couple of dangerous enemies, and Jackie, feeling less than the mother she’s always been to the girls, suspects that Catherine may have secrets that could further damage the family. Though the writing lacks subtlety and the plot is a soap opera told in broad strokes—Catherine is BAD, Terry is GOOD—Brown does offer some keen insight in her depiction of Jackie: conflicted, jealous and devoted to keeping her family together. When it’s discovered that Ariana has a malformed kidney, Catherine’s salvation rests on Alisa’s shoulders—will she come through for her much-hated mother?
A guilty-pleasure page-turner despite its obvious flaws.Pub Date: May 30, 2006
ISBN: 0-345-46945-3
Page Count: 352
Publisher: One World/Random House
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2006
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
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
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