Sentimental at times, sure, but in a Dickensian way that’s thoroughly entertaining.
Second-novelist Lambright (The Justus Girls, 2001) pays lively homage to Philly’s black music scene through the interlocking and overlapping stories of four stouthearted ladies.
Young freelancer Laverne (Legs) Diamond gets an intriguing new assignment. Track down the Sweethearts of Soul, commands Black Music magazine: find Ruth Thomas, Adeline Lights, Venus Jones, and Brenda Wade, and then interview them, because this singing group that made it big back in the 1960s is about to be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Naturally, the assignment soon develops complications. The Sweethearts are still around and still living in Philadelphia, but the easy part ends there. In the first place, they’re not eager to speak to Legs; in the second, they’re barely speaking to each other. But our heroine has the stuff of good reporters. She senses worth in the very difficulties she’s encountered, and is she ever right. Little by little, the Sweethearts begin to trust her and open up; as they do, Legs in effect goes to school. Philly’s seminal role in rock-and-roll history becomes vivid to her, but even more educational is what the Sweethearts reveal about themselves: their loves and hates, their grace under pressure, the true nature of their “sisterhood.” Foundlings all, they were taken in separately and then lovingly, carefully raised by the couple they called MuDear and PawPaw. “Oh, angels we were,” says Venus, with her characteristic grin. “I do believe we must have been the purest, shiniest, whitest little black girls in Philadelphia.” The Sweethearts’ often poignant, sometime hilarious stories teach Legs a lot. She learns to admire their toughness, to treasure their friendship—and, yes, at the close, she learns the importance of red panties for large occasions.
Sentimental at times, sure, but in a Dickensian way that’s thoroughly entertaining.Pub Date: Dec. 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-06-018475-2
Page Count: 272
Publisher: HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2004
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
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.
Life lessons.
Angie Malone, the youngest of a big, warm Italian-American family, returns to her Pacific Northwest hometown to wrestle with various midlife disappointments: her divorce, Papa’s death, a downturn in business at the family restaurant, and, above all, her childlessness. After several miscarriages, she, a successful ad exec, and husband Conlan, a reporter, befriended a pregnant young girl and planned to adopt her baby—and then the birth mother changed her mind. Angie and Conlan drifted apart and soon found they just didn’t love each other anymore. Metaphorically speaking, “her need for a child had been a high tide, an overwhelming force that drowned them. A year ago, she could have kicked to the surface but not now.” Sadder but wiser, Angie goes to work in the struggling family restaurant, bickering with Mama over updating the menu and replacing the ancient waitress. Soon, Angie befriends another young girl, Lauren Ribido, who’s eager to learn and desperately needs a job. Lauren’s family lives on the wrong side of the tracks, and her mother is a promiscuous alcoholic, but Angie knows nothing of this sad story and welcomes Lauren into the DeSaria family circle. The girl listens in, wide-eyed, as the sisters argue and make wisecracks and—gee-whiz—are actually nice to each other. Nothing at all like her relationship with her sluttish mother, who throws Lauren out when boyfriend David, en route to Stanford, gets her pregnant. Will Lauren, who’s just been accepted to USC, let Angie adopt her baby? Well, a bit of a twist at the end keeps things from becoming too predictable.
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.Pub Date: July 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-345-46750-7
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2004
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