A young New York radio reporter endures a vicious rape and its aftermath. Graves has also written about the Philippines (Share of Honor) and rich WASPs (August People). No-holds-barred realism and authentic police procedures are the distinguishing features in this well-meant but awkwardly didactic effort to depict as exactly as possible what a woman endures during and after rape. Pretty, privileged, and white, Nancy Whittredge is a rising star at an all-news station in Manhattan who, after removing some cash from an automatic teller on her way home, is robbed by two black men, then repeatedly raped, threatened with death, and forced to remove the rest of the money from her checking account. Promptly reporting the crime, Nancy begins the ordeal that must be endured by any rape victim who seeks justice. Fortunately, she's immediately paired with a well-trained victim's- assistance volunteer who stays with her through the humiliation of the physical exam and begins to restore her self-esteem. Against the wishes of her wealthy, overprotective parents, Nancy takes all the right steps, working closely with the police even when their procedures seem unbearable. She tells her story again and again, reviews thousands of photographs, and provides all available clues until the she and the police put a name to one of her assailants, working with great success on the coincidental rape of a soap-opera star all the while. Throughout the ordeal she receives estimable support from her boss and co-workers. Her pudgy, yuppie boyfriend and lifelong chum-roommate are less helpful. Well-meaning but too transparently utilitarian to succeed as a novel. Rather like a long Reader's Digest feature.
Pub Date: March 18, 1993
ISBN: 0-942637-81-X
Page Count: 396
Publisher: Barricade
Review Posted Online: May 20, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1993
Categories: GENERAL FICTION
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The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.
12
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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. 22, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2015
Categories: GENERAL FICTION
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BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PROFILES
PERSPECTIVES
Britisher Haddon debuts in the adult novel with the bittersweet tale of a 15-year-old autistic who’s also a math genius.
Christopher Boone has had some bad knocks: his mother has died (well, she went to the hospital and never came back), and soon after he found a neighbor’s dog on the front lawn, slain by a garden fork stuck through it. A teacher said that he should write something that he “would like to read himself”—and so he embarks on this book, a murder mystery that will reveal who killed Mrs. Shears’s dog. First off, though, is a night in jail for hitting the policeman who questions him about the dog (the cop made the mistake of grabbing the boy by the arm when he can’t stand to be touched—any more than he can stand the colors yellow or brown, or not knowing what’s going to happen next). Christopher’s father bails him out but forbids his doing any more “detecting” about the dog-murder. When Christopher disobeys (and writes about it in his book), a fight ensues and his father confiscates the book. In time, detective-Christopher finds it, along with certain other clues that reveal a very great deal indeed about his mother’s “death,” his father’s own part in it—and the murder of the dog. Calming himself by doing roots, cubes, prime numbers, and math problems in his head, Christopher runs away, braves a train-ride to London, and finds—his mother. How can this be? Read and see. Neither parent, if truth be told, is the least bit prepossessing or more than a cutout. Christopher, though, with pet rat Toby in his pocket and advanced “maths” in his head, is another matter indeed, and readers will cheer when, way precociously, he takes his A-level maths and does brilliantly.
A kind of Holden Caulfield who speaks bravely and winningly from inside the sorrows of autism: wonderful, simple, easy, moving, and likely to be a smash.Pub Date: June 17, 2003
ISBN: 0-385-50945-6
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: May 20, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2003
Categories: GENERAL FICTION
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