Half of the 16 stories in this debut volume come with The New Yorker's imprimatur, a few have appeared in Grand Street, and together they testify to Rofihe's range of narrative voices—a dizzying array of ages, races, classes, and genders. For all his apparent multicultural tendencies, Rofihe, in ``Born Here,'' seems to argue for the old-fashioned virtues of Western Civ., as his Puerto Rican narrator teaches himself the Great Books, and determines to learn as much as possible about people unlike himself. The Mexican-born narrator of ``Six Quarters'' repairs engines somewhere in metropolitan New York and matches his catty wife with two stories he tells over and over. In ``Something About Ireland,'' a visitor to New York marvels at his transplanted brother's exploitation of his ethnic charm. The very short ``Read Chinese'' celebrates life in New York's Chinatown. And ``Jelly Doughnuts'' chronicles the strange relationship of a troubled daughter of Holocaust survivors and her inscrutable New England Indian boyfriend. In ``Yellow Dining Room,'' a rare-book dealer affirms the notion that indeed the rich are different than the rest of us; while a New York painter of some renown envies the unusual sensibility of a less successful painter in ``Elevator Neighbors.'' Two stories told from a child's point of view are extremely effective: ``Snowsuit,'' in which a boy's delight in lying in the snow is interrupted by a concerned adult; and ``Saturday Birthdays,'' in which another boy discovers his mother's attractiveness to men. At the other end of the spectrum, ``Satellite Dish'' is the narrative of a grandmother living on her family's farm who allows her son to chop down a beloved elm in order to improve TV reception. In the title piece, a thirtysomething alcoholic must decide what his girlfriend's son should call him. Also offbeat is ``Quiet,'' the thoughts of a deaf violinist as she contemplates marriage and music. The remaining bits veer from the elliptical to the obscure, and confirm this collection's quirkiness. Confident in his reach, Rofihe disorients as much as he dazzles.
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1991
ISBN: 0-374-15384-1
Page Count: 186
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1991
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
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