A skillful combination of modern-day cowboy tale and substance-abuse parable.
Clinton (Return of Midnight Marauder, 2018, etc.) tells the story of a hard-partying cowboy who gradually comes to the realization that he wants to change his ways.
A Texas ranch hand named Clint Hazard has hit rock bottom in his personal life. He recently wrecked his car and was charged with drunk driving. It was his third DUI, which means work-release jail time and the revocation of his driver’s license. His passenger when he crashed the car was his current mistress, and as a result, his wife has thrown him out of the house and his only son, Tripp, wants nothing to do with him. Clint is a cowboy—one of the 75 hands working the H&F Ranch in the small Texas Hill Country town of Bandera, “the Cowboy Capital of the World.” He’s also a feisty, cocky man who knows just how attractive he is to women. He prides himself on being able to outwork the other hands every day, no matter how drunk or high he was the night before. But this latest turn of events has shaken him, which hasn’t escaped the notice of his friend, fellow H&F hand Micah, who shared Clint’s partying ways in the past. However, he now attends Alcoholics Anonymous meetings and has learned how to forgive himself. When Clint reaches out to Micah for help, his recovery journey begins. Clinton makes the wise narrative decision to map the recovery story onto Clint and Micah’s time on the ranch, which often takes the form of Micah defending Clint to their bosses. These tales are enlivened at every turn by the author’s obvious affection for today’s cowboy, “a blend of renaissance man, pioneer, jack-of-all-trades, and good ole boy.” He colorfully renders the atmosphere and details of ranch life, and although the author makes sure to closely link Clint’s personal story to broader recovery-philosophy generalities, he does so with a light touch that makes for smooth reading. This has the effect of humanizing Clint and grounding his story of personal discovery.
A skillful combination of modern-day cowboy tale and substance-abuse parable.Pub Date: March 25, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-9997351-0-7
Page Count: 244
Publisher: Top Westerns Publishing
Review Posted Online: June 19, 2018
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
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