An uninspiring rags-to-riches tale set in modern New York City.
The next chapter of Samantha Bonti’s life unfolds in this sophomore effort from Corso (Brooklyn Story, 2010).
Samantha thinks her life will finally begin when her abusive mob boyfriend is locked up and she meets with a publisher to discuss the memoir she’s written about dating him. But the ex-boyfriend makes some calls from jail and ruins her authorial prospects. Now, Samantha is living a solitary life in Brooklyn, working as an assistant in Manhattan and still dreaming of publishing her book. When she meets Alec DeMarco on the street one morning, she believes he’s her ticket to a posher, more secure life. He gets her attention by grabbing her shoulder and spinning her around (before telling her how beautiful she is, of course). Alec wines and dines Samantha, taking her through a whirlwind, no-expenses-spared courtship before proposing to her two months later. While unsure of many aspects of life with Alec, she agrees to marry him. For the next 10 or so years, she acts the role of Wall Street wife and mother while power-obsessed Alec becomes distant, drug-reliant, and emotionally, eventually physically, abusive. Samantha constantly prays on her rosary beads for greater peace and stability in her home life and dreams of the freedom she could attain by publishing her book, but for most of this novel, praying and dreaming are the full extent of her efforts. A more passive character would be hard to find. Entering into an abusive relationship might make sense for a character whose past consists of a string of abusive relationships, and obscene riches have been known to hypnotize many, but Corso is unable to reveal a deeper inner life for her heroine. She (and Samantha) seem to take more delight in descriptions of wealth or the corruption of Wall Street.
An uninspiring rags-to-riches tale set in modern New York City.Pub Date: Sept. 10, 2013
ISBN: 978-1-4516-9818-3
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Gallery Books/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Aug. 3, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2013
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
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
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
bookshelf
