Demandingly overwritten noir novel in deep black with hangover dialogue screwed so tight it hurts. Some scenes tattoo themselves on the brain. Soracco (Low Bite, 1989) follows the adventures of Reno as she leaves prison on parole and goes into some nameless ``Edge City'' where life is ever on the edge of cashing her in for more jail-time or maybe just for good. As black-tongued Reno thinks, ``I'm fucked coming and going.'' Or, as Soracco describes Reno's mind-state while still in the slammer: ``Still caught by the slow limping dream of prison, alone with nothing but spiders as company for too long, Reno listened to the dried souls rattle in her mind, her ritual gourd—like a miser she counted memories for protection—not nearly enough to fill her need: bend them weave them wake them shake them; over and behind the rattle she heard the judicial voices murmuring, always the same: `She shows no remorse,' `Lock her up.' `Of course, of course.' '' Enjoyment of this novel depends on how much of such writing you can take. The main characters are blacks; at least they talk in Black English. The ever-sullen Reno winds up waitressing at Club Istanbul, which features belly-dancers and a real Arab band. Drugs float everywhere, and the club's second floor is rented by Mr. Huntington, a necrophiliac writer who murders young girls and then does worse to them. This hotbed of sex, dope, and blackmail isn't the best place for a parolee to work, while Reno's room at the Royal Hotel is a lot less friendly than her old cell. The plot moves through a sludge of chopped-off dialogue to a sizzling climax with Reno stuffing hot red-pepper seeds into Huntington's ear—which has its desired effect both on him and the reader. A ba-ad old Ace or Pyramid paperback original dolled up in hardcovers but, still, mean, ugly, and sulking.
Pub Date: Nov. 10, 1992
ISBN: 0-525-93520-7
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Dutton
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1992
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
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
APPRECIATIONS
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
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