Sweet in parts, but for a story told in hindsight, it’s heavy on the black-and-white certainties of childhood and light on...
In 1970s Texas, a boy learns life lessons from his grandfather while pining for the girl next door.
Flanery’s debut novel chronicles young Mickey’s coming-of-age, as he competes in sports, fends off bullies, and comes into contact with two powerful forces: his tough-talking Grandaddy, a retired deputy sheriff who imparts wisdom from his lawn chair, and Jane, the beautiful neighborhood girl whom Mickey can’t quite bring himself to approach. Told from the perspective of an adult Mickey, now living in LA (Flanery is an actor, best known for his work in the films The Boondock Saints and Powder), the story is most memorable for Grandaddy’s advice, which is both enjoyably colorful in presentation and antiquated, especially on gender. When it comes to finding a wife, for example, Grandaddy instructs Mickey to list all the types of people a man needs in his life (“a goddamn gardener,” “a momma for ya babies,” etc.), and the person he knows who can fill each role. “Ya wife need ta fill more than half of 'em 'fore you chapel her up,” Grandaddy advises. The problem here isn’t Grandaddy’s politics, nor Mickey’s unquestioning embrace of them, but that too often Flanery’s reliance on gender stereotypes results in lazy characterizations. One male character’s odiousness is conveyed in part by the fact that he pees sitting down, while another shakes hands “with his fingertips, like a girl.” Meanwhile, a beloved teacher turns stern and humorless after marrying the dour principal, apparently unable to hold onto any personality of her own in the face of wedlock. Equally unfortunate is Flanery’s decision to continually find ways for Mickey and Jane not to interact, so that for much of the story Mickey is describing Jane from afar without even so much as talking to her. “A glittering and perfect unicorn,” is how Mickey sees his crush, but Flanery’s debut novel would’ve benefited if he’d made Jane a more familiar, and more interesting, creature: a human.
Sweet in parts, but for a story told in hindsight, it’s heavy on the black-and-white certainties of childhood and light on the (more compelling) ambiguities that come with retrospect.Pub Date: April 5, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-4555-3943-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Center Street/Hachette
Review Posted Online: March 16, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2016
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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