Touted as a comic novel, but there are precious few laughs here.
Timid debut about a gay man and his mother regrouping after his father’s suicide.
Matthew Vaber is the 35-year-old manager of a photography gallery in Manhattan. Without a partner, he spends an inordinate amount of time dialing a dating hotline. The results range from unsatisfactory (a guy with plucked eyebrows, dismissed at the door) to disastrous (a fag-basher who stuffs him into the closet after some vicious kicks and blows). Sometimes Matthew visits a bathhouse, but we hear nothing about the sex—which is a bit like setting a scene in a restaurant without mentioning the food. Six months ago Matthew’s father, a successful architect and engineer in Vermont, shot himself in the mouth. A gentle soul, he had no physical or financial problems that his family knew of but had never talked much to his wife or son (“so shut down it was ridiculous,” in his brother Andrew’s opinion). Matthew and his mother have desultory conversations about the suicide. Did Dad sense that Matthew wanted him out of the picture so he could have Mom to himself? She dismisses that explanation and also dismisses the idea that her husband had a rival in her old friend Sheila; she was never a lesbian, she declares emphatically. Matthew’s sessions with the ancient shrink Goldstein don’t turn up anything either. Galanes alternates present reality with flashbacks to Matthew’s childhood intended to provide texture, but the technique seems merely skittish in a story without a destination. Matthew is a cliché, the man afraid of relationships, and when he eventually stumbles into one with a patient, good-natured child psychiatrist it doesn’t come to life on the page. Only rarely, as in a good scene at the gallery where his salesman’s skills are vividly on display as he tries to close a deal, does Matthew actually engage with another character.
Touted as a comic novel, but there are precious few laughs here.Pub Date: June 1, 2004
ISBN: 1-4000-4160-0
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2004
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A bold but flawed debut novel.
There’s a mystery, a coming-of-age, abundant melodrama and even more abundant medical lore in this idiosyncratic first novel from a doctor best known for the memoir My Own Country (1994).
The nun is struggling to give birth in the hospital. The surgeon (is he also the father?) dithers. The late-arriving OB-GYN takes charge, losing the mother but saving her babies, identical twins. We are in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, in 1954. The Indian nun, Sister Mary Joseph Praise, was a trained nurse who had met the British surgeon Thomas Stone on a sea voyage ministering to passengers dying of typhus. She then served as his assistant for seven years. The emotionally repressed Stone never declared his love for her; had they really done the deed? After the delivery, Stone rejects the babies and leaves Ethiopia. This is good news for Hema (Dr. Hemalatha, the Indian gynecologist), who becomes their surrogate mother and names them Shiva and Marion. When Shiva stops breathing, Dr. Ghosh (another Indian) diagnoses his apnea; again, a medical emergency throws two characters together. Ghosh and Hema marry and make a happy family of four. Marion eventually emerges as narrator. “Where but in medicine,” he asks, “might our conjoined, matricidal, patrifugal, twisted fate be explained?” The question is key, revealing Verghese’s intent: a family saga in the context of medicine. The ambition is laudable, but too often accounts of operations—a bowel obstruction here, a vasectomy there—overwhelm the narrative. Characterization suffers. The boys’ Ethiopian identity goes unexplored. Shiva is an enigma, though it’s no surprise he’ll have a medical career, like his brother, though far less orthodox. They become estranged over a girl, and eventually Marion leaves for America and an internship in the Bronx (the final, most suspenseful section). Once again a medical emergency defines the characters, though they are not large enough to fill the positively operatic roles Verghese has ordained for them.
A bold but flawed debut novel.Pub Date: Feb. 6, 2009
ISBN: 978-0-375-41449-7
Page Count: 560
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2008
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.
Sisters work together to solve a child-abandonment case.
Ellie and Julia Cates have never been close. Julia is shy and brainy; Ellie gets by on charm and looks. Their differences must be tossed aside when a traumatized young girl wanders in from the forest into their hometown in Washington. The sisters’ professional skills are put to the test. Julia is a world-renowned child psychologist who has lost her edge. She is reeling from a case that went publicly sour. Though she was cleared of all wrongdoing, Julia’s name was tarnished, forcing her to shutter her Beverly Hills practice. Ellie Barton is the local police chief in Rain Valley, who’s never faced a tougher case. This is her chance to prove she is more than just a fading homecoming queen, but a scarcity of clues and a reluctant victim make locating the girl’s parents nearly impossible. Ellie places an SOS call to her sister; she needs an expert to rehabilitate this wild-child who has been living outside of civilization for years. Confronted with her professional demons, Julia once again has the opportunity to display her talents and salvage her reputation. Hannah (The Things We Do for Love, 2004, etc.) is at her best when writing from the girl’s perspective. The feral wolf-child keeps the reader interested long after the other, transparent characters have grown tiresome. Hannah’s torturously over-written romance passages are stale, but there are surprises in store as the sisters set about unearthing Alice’s past and creating a home for her.
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.Pub Date: March 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-345-46752-3
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2005
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