An entertaining biographical novel rich in action and period details.
An Italian-born adventurer battles Austrians, Russians, Confederates, and anti-immigrant bigotry in this fictionalized saga of a real-life American hero.
Lamphier (The Great Show, 2017, etc.) novelizes the outlines of Louis Palma di Cesnola’s busy life while imaginatively fleshing out scenes of romance, combat, and trauma. The second son of an Italian count, Cesnola bitterly ships out to military school at the age of 14 in 1846 after his true love marries his older brother, the heir to the family title. His timing is great: He soon enlists in the Sardinian army to join Italy’s war of liberation against the Austrian Empire; he weathers endless boredom in camp punctuated by extreme panic in a saber melee, for which he wins promotion to lieutenant. Cashiered after getting caught in bed with a general’s wife, he finds his way to the Crimean War, where he again sits around in squalid camps but gets in a few wild hours slaughtering Russian soldiers. Then he’s off to New York under the Americanized name Louis P. di Cesnola to wed heiress Mary Reid and join the Union Army as a cavalry colonel in the Civil War. Many battles with Confederate cavalry genius Jeb Stuart ensue until Cesnola is captured. His story turns dark and harrowing as he and his fellow POWs face death from disease and semistarvation in harsh Confederate camps. Cesnola survives and, after the war, serves as U.S. consul in Cyprus, where he turns his hand to archaeology and excavates many ancient artifacts; that new profession eventually lands him the directorship of New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art. The real Cesnola led an iconic 19th-century life, and Lamphier’s energetic novel deftly conveys the dizzying self-reinventions he undertook in that bustling age. Her rousing narrative features much engrossing military and archaeological lore, generous helpings of mayhem (“Parnell slashed at his opponent, sinking his saber deep in the man’s neck”), and a piquant love story, as Cesnola and Mary’s initially pragmatic relationship—she’s lonely; he’s broke—deepens into profound affection. The story’s Italian-American pride theme is sometimes intrusive, with Cesnola quick to blame slights and reversals on anti-Italian prejudice among the WASP establishment. Still, when his blood is up, he’s a plucky, appealing hero.
An entertaining biographical novel rich in action and period details.Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-947431-06-5
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Barbera Foundation
Review Posted Online: May 7, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
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
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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