A literary-minded schizophrenic with a story to tell dominates Frawley’s complex, multilayered debut novel.
The set-up for this elliptical, often uneven fiction begins in the introduction where Thomas Kinsella, a doctor at the Riverview Psychiatric Hospital, doggedly weaves together the threads of his mentally unstable yet cognitively aware patient, Dermot Fallon. Armed with information from Grace, Fallon’s compassionate companion who witnessed the progressive deterioration of his psyche and urged him to see a therapist in 2005, Kinsella presents Fallon’s serpentine story in his patient’s own words and from his own manic, bewildered mind—something he calls “the very model of a purposive psychosis.” Fallon’s story is imaginatively narrated with a dreamscape sensibility as he lushly describes his histrionics as an English-born child of Irish-Catholic heritage. The early death of his emotionally abusive father and interactions with Grace, Dermot’s cousin, Sean, and Sean’s wife, Fiona, give cause for Dr. Kinsella to offer clarifying, introspective footnotes on nearly every page. But as Fallon writes of his attempts to decipher his father’s encrypted, handwritten journals, he also reveals a careful seduction of Fiona and a betrayal of his cousin, all culminating in a downward spiral into schizophrenia. Less a novel than a steady stream of hallucinatory imageries, this tale within a tale incorporates aspects from memoir, fiction and speculative fiction genres, and while gutsy for a debut, Frawley’s tale strains too often to retain order and narrative cohesiveness. Amid a flurry of distractive font styles, superimposed text, shifting points of view, cryptograms and blacked-out pages, the plot suffocates. Frawley, an English writer living in Canada, demonstrates impressive potential in painting the grim realities of a functioning schizophrenic, but this expository first work needs to be better focused to capture a reading audience’s full attention. A mixed bag—disappointingly complicated yet creatively inspired.
Pub Date: Oct. 6, 2011
ISBN: 978-0986901300
Page Count: 297
Publisher: 529
Review Posted Online: Nov. 16, 2011
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
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.
Sisters work together to solve a child-abandonment case.
Ellie and Julia Cates have never been close. Julia is shy and brainy; Ellie gets by on charm and looks. Their differences must be tossed aside when a traumatized young girl wanders in from the forest into their hometown in Washington. The sisters’ professional skills are put to the test. Julia is a world-renowned child psychologist who has lost her edge. She is reeling from a case that went publicly sour. Though she was cleared of all wrongdoing, Julia’s name was tarnished, forcing her to shutter her Beverly Hills practice. Ellie Barton is the local police chief in Rain Valley, who’s never faced a tougher case. This is her chance to prove she is more than just a fading homecoming queen, but a scarcity of clues and a reluctant victim make locating the girl’s parents nearly impossible. Ellie places an SOS call to her sister; she needs an expert to rehabilitate this wild-child who has been living outside of civilization for years. Confronted with her professional demons, Julia once again has the opportunity to display her talents and salvage her reputation. Hannah (The Things We Do for Love, 2004, etc.) is at her best when writing from the girl’s perspective. The feral wolf-child keeps the reader interested long after the other, transparent characters have grown tiresome. Hannah’s torturously over-written romance passages are stale, but there are surprises in store as the sisters set about unearthing Alice’s past and creating a home for her.
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.Pub Date: March 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-345-46752-3
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2005
© Copyright 2025 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.
