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The Prophet, The Pope and a Jack Mormon

In Silverman’s (Divorce Lawyer: A Satyr’s Tale, 2013, etc.) latest novel, a lawyer makes an audacious attempt to take the Mormon church to court.
The story follows Ralph Stearns from his early years as a Utah Mormon, through his move to New York and embrace of secularism, and into his career as a lawyer. After a stressful, dehumanizing experience at a major law firm, Stearns and several of his colleagues establish their own firm representing stockholders in corporate litigation. They start small, but over the decades they grow into a lucrative enterprise. Stearns juggles mounting professional obligations and persistent family drama, but the novel reaches its stride late in Stearns’ career as he prepares to take on the biggest case of his career—a lawsuit taking on the Mormon church. The case accuses the church of fraud, based on its insistence on tithing despite its ample coffers. The story’s final half follows that case from beginning to end, as Stearns’ personal and professional lives reach their climaxes. The novel manages to combine courtroom drama with theological discussion, and the overall setup is interesting, particularly given the unique issues of the Mormon church. However, the story falls apart in its execution. Its long legal explorations may leave lay readers baffled, and may even leave legal professionals cold. Outside the courtroom, Ralph proves neither interesting nor sympathetic, as he lives a life filled with stock pathologies, including infidelity. The workmanlike prose aims for a knowing, world-weary tone (“The sex was as good as advertised”), but far too often, it feels unnecessary. Silverman, a former lawyer, makes an admirable effort to marry his expertise with the demands of a novel, but too often procedure trumps drama, and archetypes win out over realistic characters.
A novel with an intriguing premise, hampered by too much legalese.

Pub Date: May 5, 2014

ISBN: 978-1497328211

Page Count: 272

Publisher: CreateSpace

Review Posted Online: July 17, 2014

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A LITTLE LIFE

The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.

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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

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THE CATCHER IN THE RYE

A strict report, worthy of sympathy.

A violent surfacing of adolescence (which has little in common with Tarkington's earlier, broadly comic, Seventeen) has a compulsive impact.

"Nobody big except me" is the dream world of Holden Caulfield and his first person story is down to the basic, drab English of the pre-collegiate. For Holden is now being bounced from fancy prep, and, after a vicious evening with hall- and roommates, heads for New York to try to keep his latest failure from his parents. He tries to have a wild evening (all he does is pay the check), is terrorized by the hotel elevator man and his on-call whore, has a date with a girl he likes—and hates, sees his 10 year old sister, Phoebe. He also visits a sympathetic English teacher after trying on a drunken session, and when he keeps his date with Phoebe, who turns up with her suitcase to join him on his flight, he heads home to a hospital siege. This is tender and true, and impossible, in its picture of the old hells of young boys, the lonesomeness and tentative attempts to be mature and secure, the awful block between youth and being grown-up, the fright and sickness that humans and their behavior cause the challenging, the dramatization of the big bang. It is a sorry little worm's view of the off-beat of adult pressure, of contemporary strictures and conformity, of sentiment….

A strict report, worthy of sympathy.

Pub Date: June 15, 1951

ISBN: 0316769177

Page Count: -

Publisher: Little, Brown

Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011

Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1951

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