A sparky, affecting slice-of-life drama.
Four teachers in suburban New Jersey rely on one another’s friendship and support as they negotiate departmental politics, divorce, cancer, and relationships.
McPherson’s debut novel opens at the start of a new school year in Wick Township, New Jersey. Budgets are slimmer than ever, and instructors are overburdened. Alicia Dean, Barbara Valenti, and Phoebe Cardona must confront ongoing contract disputes and the looming possibility of a strike, the myriad indignities of menopause, helicopter parents at work and troublesome teens at home, all while attempting to make it through the day, whether through support groups, margaritas, impromptu exorcisms, or trips to the spa. Shy Marianna Gorbenko is the odd woman out in the faculty lounge at first, though she finds herself brought into the fold after some witty banter in the teachers’ lounge and post-work aerobics. The four continue to bond while helping Phoebe, a cancer survivor whose loutish husband abandoned her during her illness, move into a new home and recover from the split. As Marianna opens up to her new friends, she becomes more aware of the deep dysfunction within her marriage and its profound impact upon her self-esteem. As the drama-filled holidays give way to spring, a reinvigorated Marianna oversees a class trip, a sudden court battle jolts Phoebe, Alicia contends with a health issue, and Barbara must pick up the pieces after an accident. The novel moves among the perspectives of its four main characters, which can lead to some confusion about who’s who in the first few chapters. But everyone develops her own distinctive voice, and McPherson’s natural, snappy dialogue and crisp pacing keep things lively while allowing deeper insight into her characters.
A sparky, affecting slice-of-life drama.Pub Date: June 2, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-5234-2821-2
Page Count: 380
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Feb. 8, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2017
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
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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