by Raymond Hutson ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 13, 2014
An impressive debut that, though it drags a bit in the middle, establishes a constant and ingeniously engrossing sense of...
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A teenage girl and her Iranian lover, 17 years her senior, embark on a disturbing journey into the American Midwest.
Working as a candy striper in The Dalles Community Hospital in Oregon, 15-year-old Erika Etulain meets Dr. Majij Aziz, a repressed, bullied man from Iran in his early 30s. Compared to the boys in her tiresome junior high school, his maturity enchants her. Rebelling against staunch English parents, Erika rushes into the Iranian doctor’s arms, embarking with him on a road trip to Kansas, entering into sigheh, a temporary Shia marriage, so Majij can have sex with her guiltlessly. The cracks in this taboo coupling are immediate. Majij’s hope to shape Erika into the perfect Muslim wife whom he could take back to Iran is dashed by her rebellious spirit and inquisitive nature, to which he often violently reacts. Waiting for them in Topeka is Majij’s brother Hakim, whose devout fundamentalism demands much of his weak-willed sibling and his new wife. Hutson’s debut will predictably draw comparisons to Lolita, but the novel demonstrates a subtlety of tone and a skillful understanding of interpersonal relationships more reminiscent of Jane Austen than Vladimir Nabokov. The disquieting nature of their coupling is never romanticized, lending the narrative a clever, subdued quality so that otherwise banal happenings—a fart by Majij, an immature, sniping teenage comment from Erika—disturb not only the characters but the reader as well. The drawback to this approach is that the novel’s most important moments and its settings feel overly restrained, even generalized, in their portrayals, blunting emotional or violent outbursts by the characters and ironically making the novel feel its most inert when on the road. Though set before the events of 9/11, and never once uttering the word “terrorism,” the book draws heavily on real-world happenings in 1989, from the influence of the ayatollah to the first World Trade Center bombings, fostering a timely paranoia that addresses, if only superficially, both Islamophobia and fundamentalist Muslims’ fear of Western influences.
An impressive debut that, though it drags a bit in the middle, establishes a constant and ingeniously engrossing sense of discomfort.Pub Date: Jan. 13, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-615-80963-2
Page Count: 362
Publisher: Gilliss Books
Review Posted Online: March 24, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2014
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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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