This tale of a troubled film editor effectively captures the dark excitement of sunny LA.
A young European gets lost in the parties, traffic, and unbelievable characters that make up Los Angeles in this novel.
After a traumatic breakup, the confused and often drunk Mona, a native of the Netherlands, finds herself in LA. People ask where she lives, but she can only respond, “South Catalina something? You can see the Hollywood sign from the house.” Her brother, Joost, is an up-and-coming director whose recent success at Cannes has led him to turn an old Cary Grant movie into a sexy, space-set romance with blockbuster potential. Mona careens from power lunches to studios with Joost, trying to conceal the truth that she actually edits his films and maybe controls her brother’s creative force, before meeting Elki—a free-wheeling Angelino from Koreatown. Elki’s mother gave good enough pedicures that both family members ended up in the glitzy world of Bel Air as well as on the eccentric fringes of old and new Hollywood. Now Elki profits by stealing movie memorabilia and partying. While Joost struggles to deal with his producer’s bottom line and conniving manipulations, Mona watches the crowns of palm trees out car windows blur together as Elki takes her deeper into a world of parties, broken relationships, robberies, and the surprise of just how small a town LA can be. A tendency toward self-destruction, impulsiveness, and outlandish outbursts makes Mona the type of tormented enfant terrible that drives bleak coming-of-age classics like The Catcher in the Rye and Girl, Interrupted. Yet at the same time, Mona can feel flat compared to other characters—her perceptions as a Dutch citizen in a new country are never quite addressed, for example—and there are long stretches where she becomes an apathetic camera simply capturing the wild scenes of LA. Still, Moroni (Medusa Blues, 2006, etc.) clearly understands and loves that city for all of its contradictory excesses. “LA is like bubble-gum,” a character named Bama says. “You need it bad, then the buzz fades, but you’re hooked, and all your teeth fall out.” The same could be said of this book: The story never gives Mona quite enough depth, but its zany, surreal situations and whip-smart dialogue make for an addictive ride.
This tale of a troubled film editor effectively captures the dark excitement of sunny LA.Pub Date: June 25, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-9996523-1-9
Page Count: 241
Publisher: Dark Thrill
Review Posted Online: June 29, 2018
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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