A worthy follow-up (titled after the American pronunciation of a Polish polka) to Shea's promising debut (Selling the Lite of Heaven, 1994); again, the author captures the spirit of an insular Polish-Catholic community and homes in on one unforgettable family. Donna Milewski is a relatively content 14-year-old—until her parents decide to adopt her cousin, six-year-old Elzbieta—the daughter of Donna's father's brother, who can no longer support his family back in Poland. Donna is ambivalent about the newcomer (called Betty in Massachusetts), but when Betty follows Donna on her first date and gets them both hit by an out-of-control truck, her happy existence abruptly ends. In the accident's aftermath, Donna gets blamed for being irresponsible, Betty—thought to have saved Donna—becomes a heroine, and the media goes crazy over the brave immigrant child who risked all to save her new ``sister,'' even giving the Milewskis a new home. No one bothers to ask Donna what happened (and she can't speak for six weeks, her broken jaw wired shut), so it's never discovered that it was Donna who saved Betty—and no one believes her when she later tries to explain. Meanwhile, Donna's father immediately transfers all his affections to Betty—for reasons unexplained. Although both girls recover physically, once Donna graduates from high school she moves out of her parents' house and never speaks to her father again. It will take his death—and an all-girl polka band she forms on an old friend's suggestion—before she can finally come to terms with her father, Betty, the accident, and a romance that's been waiting right next door. Until the ludicrous finale, when Betty's sister Aniela, a Donna look-alike from Poland, appears and offers a highly implausible rationale for Donna's father's inexcusable behavior, this is a sometimes rollicking, sometimes heartbreaking, effectively quirky read. (Author tour; radio satellite tour)
Pub Date: June 1, 1996
ISBN: 0-671-53544-7
Page Count: -
Publisher: Pocket
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 1996
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
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
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