Two-dimensional characters and clunky writing leaves little to recommend this predictable romance.
A romantic comedy featuring a young woman stuck in the past and her next-door neighbor, who harbors a secret passion.
LilyAnn was once crowned Peachy-Keen Queen of Blessings, Ga., but that was years ago, when her boyfriend was still alive. When he died in Iraq, LilyAnn remade her identity into the grieving girlfriend, and now, 11 years later, although graveside visits have ended, she is overweight, unhappy, anti-social and stuck in a life she had little hand in shaping. Her companion over the years has been Mike Dalton, a childhood friend and next-door neighbor. He has adored her forever and hopes one day she’ll wake up so their love can be less one-sided. Thankfully, the ladies at the local salon, The Curl Up & Dye, will help the two move in the right direction. Meanwhile, T.J. Lachlan has come to town, and his rowdy machismo has inspired LilyAnn to lose some weight. The turn of events has outraged Mike (he suspects LilyAnn of flirting with T.J.), who feels his decadelong patience and faithfulness has been for naught. Mike plans on making LilyAnn jealous; she plans on ignoring him. They both give each other the cold shoulder. And then LilyAnn recognizes that she may have been in love with Mike all along, if only he would talk to her again. Only when T.J. reveals himself to be a real villain do Mike and LilyAnn realize that they should dispense with all their nonsense and get married. Sala, author of dozens of novels (A Thousand Lies, 2013, etc.), seems less interested in the motivations of her characters than the machinations of the plot, leaving a sense of tired inevitability to the happy ending.
Two-dimensional characters and clunky writing leaves little to recommend this predictable romance.Pub Date: Feb. 4, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-4022-8396-3
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Sourcebooks Landmark
Review Posted Online: Aug. 10, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2013
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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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