In Levine’s (Catch and Other Poems, 2015, etc.) stark nine-story collection, characters with seemingly ordinary lives endure loss, both palpable and transcendental.
Ed Kramer, the title story’s protagonist, is an unassertive man who for all intents and purposes is content with his wife, June, and son, Jeremy. But when Ed decides to become a repeat donor, starting with his bone marrow, he gives away more than tangible parts. His unequivocal happiness with the press and public admiring his “self-sacrifice” ultimately affects his family. Similarly, in “Tlac,” Deborah and Harry Ashe grieve in vastly different ways after the death of their son, Cal T., from a car accident. Deborah’s remembrance of her son is almost a religious experience, talking in a recovery group about the sights, sounds, and smells of Cal T. Not surprisingly, Harry’s contrasting despondency puts more than a strain on their relationship. Fortunately, not all of Levine’s tales are bleak. The opening “But Is It Art?” is a riot, in which Jade Frommer stuns her stepdad, Arnold, and mom, Norell, with a performance piece highlighted by audio recordings of her parents—things they might not necessarily want other people to hear. The subsequent “Jeopardy,” in the same vein, has only the appearance of despair. It tells the tale of college professor Jake Dubovsky, caring for ailing mother Edith, and a family devastated by her abusive husband. But there’s definitely hope: mother and son share elation in watching Edith’s favorite show, Jeopardy!, with host Alex Trebek representing “everything her husband had never been.” A couple of stories tiptoe close to surrealism without stepping completely over the line. In “Love and Death at the Golden Bear Recreation Center,” for example, Sommers, while swimming laps, mentally recites eulogies for people who aren’t dead though soon may be. Likewise, the narrator in “The Second-Tuesday-of-the-Month Irving Horowitz Support Group” meets with men of the same name. But it’s Ervin (“close enough”) who elbows his way into the narrator’s mind and home life, strangely knowledgeable about the mysterious Irving. Most stories, like “Art?,” have open-to-interpretation endings, but none is more jarring than the closing tale, “Becoming Burt Reynolds,” about the rise and fall of a celebrity look-alike.
Strong characters and stories that, whether bitter or sweet, unquestionably elicit an emotional response.
Pub Date: July 10, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-59266-104-6
Page Count: 264
Publisher: Capra
Review Posted Online: June 2, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.
Pub Date: July 11, 1960
ISBN: 0060935464
Page Count: 323
Publisher: Lippincott
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
bookshelf
