by Ramy Tadros ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 5, 2013
A sometimes-exciting but ultimately meandering portrait of a society gone horribly wrong.
In Tadros’ (The War of the Words, 2013, etc.) terrifying future tale, one man resists the total control of the state in a last-ditch attempt to save a world in disarray.
It’s the 23rd century, and the Occidental Union controls the world. Its rulers have successfully brainwashed a poor, blindly dependent public into supporting its supposedly collectivist politic. However, despite its power, the state fails to meet even the basic needs of its population. One man tells of his own personal rebellion as the Occidental Union tries to keep power in an increasingly chaotic world. The disillusioned narrator is inspired by his visits to the idyllic Free Islands, which are home to the last strongholds of the Coptic Orthodox Christian community. With his dog, Anup, he braves disorder, disease and countless adversaries in an attempt to discover the truth behind the state’s secret plan, the aptly named Project United We Fall. As in all dystopian stories, the slow elaboration of the speculative setting is the main thrill here. Tadros’ academic vocabulary and tendency toward explanation lend themselves to such a book, which is ultimately a cautionary tale—a worst-case scenario for an unchecked welfare state and a perverted rhetoric of social justice. Indeed, the old-school liberal philosophy underpinning the book is fairly explicit: Tadros writes that the Union’s ideology of “Scientism–Collectivism searches for the one grand theory to unify everything and everyone. It is the final assault against the individual and individual experience in the pursuit of Enlightenment-driven progress.” Such clear political tensions, featuring obvious “good” and “bad” guys, frequently drown potentially lively action scenes in extended reflections on the merits of individual rights, as exemplified by other thinkers, such as Aldous Huxley and Thomas Hobbes. Even though many readers may agree with these principles, the book’s bold emphasis on them often works against the story.
A sometimes-exciting but ultimately meandering portrait of a society gone horribly wrong.Pub Date: Nov. 5, 2013
ISBN: 978-0987553027
Page Count: 308
Publisher: Nightlight Books
Review Posted Online: April 4, 2014
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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by Ramy Tadros
by Hanya Yanagihara ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 10, 2015
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.
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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. 21, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2015
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by Kristin Hannah ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 1, 2004
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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