Engaging, evenly paced story of a young man’s journey from first romance to enduring love.
A coming-of-age romance set in the early 20th century.
In a mountain valley in Stones Mill, Va., nine-year-old Jack Langdon shares a bed with his younger brothers and sidesteps blows from surly father John. One bright spot is Jack’s grandmother and her prophecies, which hint that the boy’s destiny lies in becoming a lady’s special protector. When his sister Grace is born, Jack believes she is his lady of prophecy. He becomes Grace’s “proverbial guard dog,” defending her against his brothers and his father, who attacks Jack with a brick, shortly after his 17th birthday. In 1917, volunteers are needed for the U.S. Army, and Jack readily enlists. En route to the military base, he sees a beautiful, red-haired, green-eyed girl, who becomes his wartime fantasy. On the Western Front, he experiences the horrors of trench warfare. In France, lovely nurse Esmé cares for an injured Jack–and he eventually follows her to Paris, where she teaches him more than a few French phrases. The war ends and Jack returns home, encountering the gorgeous redhead he thought he’d never see again. Alice wears pants and makeup, has an aunt who was a suffragette and can hold her own with Jack’s father–none of which endears her to his family or the locals. The book is a simple, charming story and Jack is an amiable guy who, like George Bailey of Bedford Falls, wants to leave his hometown but seems tethered to a retractable cord. Especially touching is Jack’s fear that he is more like his father than he’d hoped. The narrative explores Jack and Alice’s thoughts and feelings, making them both sympathetic characters. In spite of historical references, there’s no vital sense that events are unfolding in the early 1900s, but the tale’s inspiring undercurrent is the promise of a better life.
Engaging, evenly paced story of a young man’s journey from first romance to enduring love.Pub Date: Aug. 5, 2009
ISBN: 978-1-4486-2911-4
Page Count: -
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 23, 2010
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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