A unique, daring fantasy more interested in morality than the dazzle of other worlds.
A novel about a young man’s journey to a fantastic place, with real-world consequences for himself and his family.
With an almost chant-like cadence, Deepan renders the psychological tensions in the Patel household via the careful descriptions given by the father of 17-year-old Jake, descriptions that illuminate the many movements and evasive gestures that structure his relationship to his son. The emotional fire that fuels this father-son bond grows from a wife-mother dying of cancer, and from this metastasis spread many tendrils of grief, blame, desperation and resentment. It’s a strikingly contemporary and unorthodox prologue to a novel that the author eventually populates with sorcerers, witches, spells and mystical lands. It seems initially jarring, but this down-to-earth pathos and mature psychological detail gives the phantasmagoric portions of the book additional heft and material dimension. Jake’s father informs the reader directly that this is the story of his son and himself, and that, whatever follows, nothing will be the same for anyone involved. Jake takes the brunt of the drama as he finds his way, by aid of Ureth the witch, to Tiramonde, a fantastic land whose destiny is intertwined with his where he embarks on a quest to reverse his mother’s fate with the restorative fruit of the Dendragon Tree. Though parallel destinies and plucky chosen ones are standard fare for young-adult fantasy, the moral conundrums that compound on Jake’s shoulders set this novel apart. He searches for the fruit of the Dendragon Tree, but Jake must also contend with legends that foretell the release of an ancient, destructive dragon should he dare pluck the tree’s fruit—is his mother’s life worth that of an entire world? Eventually Jake’s father journeys to Tiramonde to retrieve his son, but that only increases the moral murkiness of Jake’s decisions. Deepan’s prose is elegant and clear, even when Jake’s proper course of action is not, and readers will get caught up in the struggles of characters with such depth and heart. If this fantasy novel were only about a troubled kingdom in need of its lost crystal, or some other well-worn trope, it would probably still have been entertaining. But the work deftly allegorizes the hero’s journey into a story about family, death and forgiveness, setting it apart as a genuine curiosity and affirming read for fantasy fans.
A unique, daring fantasy more interested in morality than the dazzle of other worlds.Pub Date: May 17, 2010
ISBN: 978-1432756703
Page Count: 321
Publisher: Outskirts
Review Posted Online: Aug. 5, 2011
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
