A spirited adventure that takes itself too seriously.
Bacino presents a revisionist novel set in Elizabethan England.
Who wrote the plays now attributed to Shakespeare? Was it the actor from Stratford who ascended rapidly from unknown player to admired playwright? Or was someone else behind the Bard’s words? Bacino suspects the latter and builds his case in this novel, which is, as he reminds readers on the cover, in the preface and with the appendix, “based entirely on historical facts.” Christopher Marlowe, the most famous dramatist of his day, was killed in a bar brawl at the age of 29. But Bacino posits that his supposed death was an elaborate hoax, and Shakespeare, who is disparaged as “Horsy Will, the pony boy” (definitely not an historical accuracy) for his occupation tending to the steeds of noblemen attending the theater, was hired as a front so that Marlowe might continue to produce plays after his staged demise. Here, Shakespeare emerges as a dim, uninterested rube; Marlowe, on the other hand, is a dandy, churning out masterpieces from behind the protective walls of his lover Sir Thomas Walsingham’s castle. But when suspicions arise and similarities between Shakespeare’s plays and Marlowe’s work emerge, Marlowe must flee England; questions about his role in the Bard’s plays, however, dog him for the rest of the novel and beyond. This book tries to reanimate a centuries-old debate but struggles under the weight of its purported historicity. If Bacino had lightened his touch, this could be a fun, though purely speculative, romp. Instead, the author presents more than 50 pages of endnotes detailing the alleged facts upon which the novel is based—occasionally interspersed with admissions of fictive elements, such as Shakespeare’s pejorative nickname. These facts are not noted within the text nor are their sources cited; lacking proper documentation, they aren’t especially strong evidence for Bacino’s theory. Wanting to be taken on an adventure, the reader is instead left worried about the credentials of the tour guide.
A spirited adventure that takes itself too seriously.Pub Date: Jan. 7, 2011
ISBN: 978-1452050652
Page Count: 300
Publisher: AuthorHouse
Review Posted Online: March 17, 2011
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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