It's The Playboy of the Western World revisited in this first novel by Connaughton, author of the collection A Border Station (1990) and collaborator on the screenplay for My Left Foot. For surely the Irish rapscallion here (who remains unnamed) goes on as wild a coming-of-age ride as Singe's Christy Mahon ever did, beginning with the death of his dear, flour-coated, buttermilk- smelling mammy. Her passing leaves him at the mercy of his daddy, the police sergeant in the village of Butlershill, right on the border between Northern Ireland and the Republic. But when the sergeant suggests he learn to cook, our hero takes off to bunk in with his buddy Prunt and to go on adventures—shouting ``vagina!'' right out loud on a dare, smuggling a bit, impersonating a priest in order to bless a pig, and rolling in the hay at a Freemasons' dance with a girl who gets insulted when our boy takes it in his mind to kiss her foot. True love does eventually come his way in the form of pretty Annagh Lee; but after a month of delirious loving, her form swells, bringing more trouble—Annagh Lee shipped off to Toronto after a miscarriage induced by the sight of a rat, and her lover's privates tarred and feathered by irate relatives. The latter is what teaches Connaughton's wayward youth to calm down, of course, because ``You can't run amok forever....'' The tale's familiar—and, sadly, the writing's uneven, with some wretched schmaltz (``Fold the ground over me/You have broken my heart/That's what hearts are for'') cheek by jowl with much sprightlier stuff (``Sex drove you to love. Or love drove you to sex. Either way it was enough to drive you mad''). Still, Connaughton's heart is in the right place, so some Irish eyes will be shining.
Pub Date: March 16, 1992
ISBN: 0-312-07077-2
Page Count: 224
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1992
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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