A sprawling, adrenaline-drenched story that will appeal even to readers who know next to nothing about auto racing.
In this fact-based historical novel, a journalist seeks to uncover the secrets of the men who dominated Grand Prix racing in Europe prior to the second world war.
It’s 1968 when American writer Joe Deutsch arrives in Venice to interview journalist Johnny Finestrini for a book he’s writing on the giants of Grand Prix motor racing in Germany and Italy during the 1930s. The characters the two men discuss are so vibrant and colorful that one can hardly believe they were all real, let alone that so many died in fiery tragedy. There was Bernd Rosemeyer, the young German who represented everything Hitler wanted his Reich to be; Tazio Nuvolari, the “Flying Mantuan,” whose familial tragedies eliminated any fear of death on the track; and Achille Varzi, a stylish man seemingly born to be a champion. Finestrini, who wrote about them all for Italy’s Gazzetta, tells Deutsch about the pressure from Mussolini himself to turn Nuvolari and Varzi’s rivalry into something more harmonious in print. Varzi’s love for Ilse—a morphine addict and the wife of one of his competitors—led to his eventual downfall, but Deutsch believes that there’s more to the story than a beautiful siren leading a great man into an addiction even more dangerous than his desire to win. But does the tricky, manipulative Finestrini know, and will he tell? Experienced journalist and debut novelist Martini spent a decade researching the real men whose stories form the basis of this work of fiction, and it shows in the both epic and intimate details that make this story spring to life. In Martini’s prose, one can almost hear the tires screeching around the track, from the dry deserts of Libya to the damp mountains of Italy, from the sparkling streets of Monaco all the way to the shores of the United States. Amid the pungent fumes of gasoline, readers will also feel the sense of dread as the world inched closer to war.
A sprawling, adrenaline-drenched story that will appeal even to readers who know next to nothing about auto racing.Pub Date: Sept. 9, 2014
ISBN: 978-1906582432
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Aurora Metro Press
Review Posted Online: April 13, 2015
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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