An intriguing if ultimately frustrating blend of sci-fi and New Age philosophy.
In this contemplative sci-fi—the prequel to Love, Light and Labor (1995)—Anthony offers an enticing glimpse into a more utopian Earth.
This novel introduces readers to Tobias Sinclair, a lawyer-turned-author-turned–reluctant savior of the human race. At first, Tobias is a scuffling New-Age hack, on the road promoting his latest book. But a knock on his head during a mugging gives him a whole new perspective on the universe, which he then takes to “the people of the earth.” That’s because, as he explains, Tobias feels a sense of urgency to help them survive: “I continue to think that somehow we will all die, or at least our society will die, if we don’t restructure the way we view ourselves.” The bulk of the novel finds Tobias, aided by friends Mill and Jimmy, attempting to bring others around to his humanistic way of thinking as he perpetually runs into self-interest and sectarianism while espousing forgiveness and togetherness. He says exasperatedly, “If we continue to kill and mistreat one another, we will be a doomed species.” Then, in an unexpected but worthwhile twist, extraterrestrials reveal themselves to Tobias. While the aliens applaud his lofty goals, they fear he’s revealing too much too soon for the humans to process. As alien spokesman Stokes says, “They don’t like change, and they just think of you as a dangerous threat.” Tobias works well as a flawed protagonist who can’t seem to heal his own fractured family while striving to save humanity. His friends are serviceable sidekicks, but most of the other characters are merely faceless, intransigent opposition. Anthony offers thought-provoking ideas, yet, with too much philosophy and not enough action, the novel seems much longer than it is. It’s hard to save people from themselves if they’ve stopped listening early in the sermon.
An intriguing if ultimately frustrating blend of sci-fi and New Age philosophy.Pub Date: May 21, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-9743600-2-7
Page Count: 266
Publisher: Paul Anthony Corley
Review Posted Online: Aug. 18, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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 strict report, worthy of sympathy.
A violent surfacing of adolescence (which has little in common with Tarkington's earlier, broadly comic, Seventeen) has a compulsive impact.
"Nobody big except me" is the dream world of Holden Caulfield and his first person story is down to the basic, drab English of the pre-collegiate. For Holden is now being bounced from fancy prep, and, after a vicious evening with hall- and roommates, heads for New York to try to keep his latest failure from his parents. He tries to have a wild evening (all he does is pay the check), is terrorized by the hotel elevator man and his on-call whore, has a date with a girl he likes—and hates, sees his 10 year old sister, Phoebe. He also visits a sympathetic English teacher after trying on a drunken session, and when he keeps his date with Phoebe, who turns up with her suitcase to join him on his flight, he heads home to a hospital siege. This is tender and true, and impossible, in its picture of the old hells of young boys, the lonesomeness and tentative attempts to be mature and secure, the awful block between youth and being grown-up, the fright and sickness that humans and their behavior cause the challenging, the dramatization of the big bang. It is a sorry little worm's view of the off-beat of adult pressure, of contemporary strictures and conformity, of sentiment….
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.Pub Date: June 15, 1951
ISBN: 0316769177
Page Count: -
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1951
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
APPRECIATIONS
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