A heartfelt if frequently uneventful novel.
A college dropout with chronic anxiety finds meaning—and unlikely romance—working at an institution for developmentally challenged young adults.
Originally published in 1986, Borsten's first novel is the story of South Floridian Benny Horowitz, who quits college two weeks before graduation and finds employment at the ARC House, where he is charged with supervising eight difficult residents. Though he feels unsuited for the job, he is gradually drawn into their mysterious world. He is especially drawn to Nadia, an attractive 26-year-old who may have the mind of a 12-year-old and an IQ of 68 but sees the world through a rarified artist's sensibility that transforms the way Benny views life. His involvement with Nadia inevitably leads to his departure from the ARC House, but he maintains his deep connection with her in the face of adversity. Borsten, who works with developmentally disabled adults in Oregon, captures the world of these citizens with admirable insight and understanding, if not always the most compelling narratives. Long stretches of the book detail scenes without making them matter. And the sections on Benny's grandfather, a Polish immigrant who ran a successful dry-goods business while enjoying a happy arranged marriage, and Benny's father, Mort, whose life hasn't been the same since getting fired from his college job in a hospital for labor organizing, don't really connect with the main story. The high points of the book (the title plays on a term for death) are Benny's unusual sexual awakening with Nadia, which is handled sensitively but also sensually, and Nadia's streaming first-person monologues. To his credit, the author embraces the developmentally challenged as special without sentimentally depicting their lives as richer or purer than that of "normal" individuals.
A heartfelt if frequently uneventful novel.Pub Date: Aug. 1, 2010
ISBN: 978-1-57962-210-7
Page Count: 334
Publisher: Permanent Press
Review Posted Online: June 4, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2010
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
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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