Vivid storytelling in a Faustian tale, with a few meanderings.
A boy growing up in New York City becomes riven between good and evil in this debut coming-of-age novel.
The story opens with the unnamed narrator as an infant, timid in nature and emotionally attached to his teddy bear. His father is quite the opposite. Recently released from prison and the son of an Italian immigrant prizefighter, he is tender toward his family but has a brutal temper when crossed by others. When the narrator is being bullied at school, a man in a red sweat suit arrives, douses the culprit in gasoline, and threatens to torch him. The narrator suspects that the “red stranger” is connected to his father, and his innocence begins to slowly recede. After developing a proclivity to play truant from high school, the narrator has a chance encounter with his teacher Delbar Pahlavi, who introduces him to the joys of classic literature. The narrator’s family moves to New Jersey, where he adapts to suburbia; finds a girl, Alex; and, in time, becomes an attorney. It is at this point in his life that the “red stranger” returns, offering the possibility of great wealth, to be accrued from fixing horse races. The lure of the dark side is devilishly tempting. Cea offers a contemporary take on the classic German Faust legend, in which a demon lures the dissatisfied protagonist into temptation. This is intelligent, weighty writing. When describing his grandfather, the narrator notes: “He wasn’t courageous, just fearless. His demeanor was of a quiet confidence. Some people may have mistaken him for complacent. That wasn’t it either. He was just satisfied with the way his life turned out, and completely happy.” The portrait is followed by a pleasingly serene account of the family making wine together. These tender observations are counterbalanced by searingly pitiless passages, as when the narrator’s father urinates on a corpse, commenting: “I told him I was going to piss on his grave. I’m just saving myself the trip.” Cea proves expert in celebrating and berating the cult of masculinity in equal measure. On occasion, the author shoehorns in a philosophical debate, such as a protracted conversation between a priest and a physicist regarding Creation. Although engaging, this is somewhat incongruous to the developing narrative. But this proves only a minor distraction from a thoroughly engrossing novel.
Vivid storytelling in a Faustian tale, with a few meanderings.Pub Date: Feb. 16, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-692-57709-7
Page Count: 230
Publisher: iUniverse
Review Posted Online: Aug. 21, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
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
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
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