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A DRY SPELL

Conventional ghost-story/romancer about a drifter who brings love, confusion, and, finally, a torrential downpour to an arid North Dakota burg. Long-haired, muscularly handsome Tom Keatley wanders from town to town paying for his next drink by winning $50 barroom bets that he has a psychic ability to make it rain. Alas, he's not very good at exploiting his talent, and, besides, he can't stay in one place too long before bad memories of his abusive father catch up with him. Karen Grange, a former compulsive shopper, is now trying to make amends for piling up a mountain of credit-card debt as the sole employee of an out-of-state bank. She can't bear to foreclose on another farm, but that's about all she's done since being transferred to the Badlands hamlet of Goodlands. Freak accidents and three years of drought have just about destroyed the town's agricultural economy. Of course, Karen—tall, darkly beautiful, and alienated from the heartland types around her—has no reason to suspect that the hideous corpse of a woman who's been dead for a century and who's been accidentally exhumed on Karen's property could possibly have anything to do with so much bad luck. Then, on an appropriately dusty day, Keatley arrives on her doorstep. Karen can't recall sending the letter that summoned him, but she pilfers funds from her bank to pay him a $2,500 deposit to end Goodlands' drought. Business and passion combine as Keatley discovers an evil spirit that possesses some of the town's inhabitants, and forces them to say ``ashes to ashes, dust to dust'' while they perform acts of mayhem. A few neighbors think the elimination of Keatley and Karen just might solve all their problems, forcing the story to a predictable storm-tossed climax. Canadian writer Moloney's second novel (but first to appear here) is a tepid Horse Whisperer rewrite using Stephen King conventions even too worn and weary for him. (Film rights to Paramount; Book-of-the-Month Club/Quality Paperback Book Club selection; $350,000 ad/promo; author tour)

Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1997

ISBN: 0-385-31829-4

Page Count: 386

Publisher: Delacorte

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1997

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A LITTLE LIFE

The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.

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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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TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD

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

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