Just in time for poolside reading, this elegant novel wears its intelligence lightly.
After her husband’s death, a Manhattan blue blood and mother of five receives a letter. Could her husband have had a secret second family?
According to an interview with Rieger (The Divorce Papers, 2014), about 25 percent of the people who have DNA testing learn that their fathers are people other than the men they thought they were. From that inspiration, she devised this assured novel of family, money, and secrets, reminiscent in theme and tone of Edith Wharton, though in Rieger’s world, those who err are not necessarily punished. Rupert Falkes, dropped off in his infancy on the steps of a British church, is a self-made man of the highest order, having come to the U.S., attended Yale Law School, and married the beautiful Eleanor Phipps, who comes from “that class of New Yorker whose bloodlines were traced in the manner of racehorses.” The Falkeses have five sons: Harry, a lawyer; Will, a Hollywood agent; Sam, a medical researcher; Jack, a genius musician; and Tom, a federal prosecutor. Two “married Jewish,” one is gay, all went to Princeton, and all adore their mother. When a woman named Vera Wolinski claims that her two grown sons are also Rupert’s and are thus entitled to a share of his estate, the family is thrown into disarray. Only Eleanor is calm—rather than get into DNA testing and court battles, she feels she “should do something for them.” Eleanor may have no burning need to know the truth (or perhaps she already knows it), but her sons don’t feel that way, and readers, of course, always want the scoop. Despite an omniscient narrator who lays out information as quickly and smoothly as a Vegas blackjack dealer, the argument of this book seems to be that we simply can’t know absolutely everything and it’s better that way. This is Eleanor’s view, certainly, and she is a character you don’t argue with.
Just in time for poolside reading, this elegant novel wears its intelligence lightly.Pub Date: May 23, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-101-90471-8
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Feb. 20, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2017
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A masterly encapsulation of modern Russian history, this book more than fulfills the promise of Towles' stylish debut, Rules...
Sentenced to house arrest in Moscow's Metropol Hotel by a Bolshevik tribunal for writing a poem deemed to encourage revolt, Count Alexander Rostov nonetheless lives the fullest of lives, discovering the depths of his humanity.
Inside the elegant Metropol, located near the Kremlin and the Bolshoi, the Count slowly adjusts to circumstances as a "Former Person." He makes do with the attic room, to which he is banished after residing for years in a posh third-floor suite. A man of refined taste in wine, food, and literature, he strives to maintain a daily routine, exploring the nooks and crannies of the hotel, bonding with staff, accepting the advances of attractive women, and forming what proves to be a deeply meaningful relationship with a spirited young girl, Nina. "We are bound to find comfort from the notion that it takes generations for a way of life to fade," says the companionable narrator. For the Count, that way of life ultimately becomes less about aristocratic airs and privilege than generosity and devotion. Spread across four decades, this is in all ways a great novel, a nonstop pleasure brimming with charm, personal wisdom, and philosophic insight. Though Stalin and Khrushchev make their presences felt, Towles largely treats politics as a dark, distant shadow. The chill of the political events occurring outside the Metropol is certainly felt, but for the Count and his friends, the passage of time is "like the turn of a kaleidoscope." Not for nothing is Casablanca his favorite film. This is a book in which the cruelties of the age can't begin to erase the glories of real human connection and the memories it leaves behind.
A masterly encapsulation of modern Russian history, this book more than fulfills the promise of Towles' stylish debut, Rules of Civility(2011).Pub Date: Sept. 6, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-670-02619-7
Page Count: 480
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: June 20, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2016
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
"This soil," concludes the young narrator of this quiet chronicle of garrotted innocence, "is bad for all kinds of flowers. Certain seeds it will not nurture, certain fruit it will not bear." And among the exclusions of white rural Ohio, echoed by black respectability, is ugly, black, loveless, twelve-year-old Pecola. But in a world where blue-eyed gifts are clucked over and admired, and the Pecolas are simply not seen, there is always the possibility of the dream and wish—for blue eyes. Born of a mother who adjusted her life to the clarity and serenity of white households and "acquired virtues that were easy to maintain" and a father, Cholly, stunted by early rejections and humiliations, Pecola just might have been loved—for in raping his daughter Cholly did at least touch her. But "Love is never better than the lover," and with the death of her baby, the child herself, accepting absolutely the gift of blue eyes from a faith healer (whose perverse interest in little girls does not preclude understanding), inches over into madness. A skillful understated tribute to the fall of a sparrow for whose small tragedy there was no watching eye.
Pub Date: Oct. 29, 1970
ISBN: 0375411550
Page Count: -
Publisher: Holt Rinehart & Winston
Review Posted Online: Sept. 30, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 1970
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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SEEN & HEARD
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