A conceptually intriguing portrait of the man Elvis might have been if he weren’t all shook up.
Elvis forms a wary friendship with the pauper, who may just be his long-lost brother.
Long-time character actor Carlson captures a different brand of drama in a debut novel that imagines the alternate history of the King’s twin. Redneck laborer Ray Johnston has a good heart, but the man can’t catch a break to save his life. At the age of 42, his only treasures are a broken-down pickup truck, a trailer in need of a paint job and one and a half hard-earned acres of dirt. He collects his thoughts by pounding an old guitar and singing the blues, a coincidence that adds to his uncanny resemblance to another Memphis icon having his own troubles in 1977. A rediscovered diary leads Ray to the somewhat terrifying idea that he may be Elvis’s big brother Jesse Garon, mistakenly reported stillborn. The author’s convincing rendering of the working man is touching, illustrating Ray’s humiliating experiences as he struggles to keep jobs, maintain his relationship with a local barmaid and pay the nursing home in which his ailing father lives. In fact, contrasting Ray with his paranoid, drug-addled sibling could have been a garish exercise. Thankfully, when “E” finally appears, Carlson presents him gracefully as a man much like his brother, one whose life has gotten completely out of hand in different ways. The two brothers form a tenuous bond, though their reunion is plagued by troubles ranging from tabloid temptations and Vernon Presley’s misgivings to a botched kidnapping that leaves Ray in worse straits. “What great twins they were; one became the most famous person in the world and the other got his friends ripped off for every penny they had and couldn’t quite keep up his house trailer payments,” Ray muses. Things end badly, as they did for Elvis, but the King’s parting gift to Ray will bring a smile even to the most tangential Elvis fans.
A conceptually intriguing portrait of the man Elvis might have been if he weren’t all shook up.Pub Date: Nov. 15, 2007
ISBN: 978-0-312-37398-6
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Dunne/St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2007
BOOK REVIEW
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
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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