Holthe shifts from the World War II–era Filipino setting of her richly original debut novel (When the Elephants Dance, 2001) to the contemporary Riviera in this novel of linked stories about characters whose lives jostle and sometimes collide along the French-Italian train line to Cannes.
In the opening story, the collision is literal. Chazz, a troubled, wealthy American, is fatally struck by a car outside the train station. He has been physically running away from two train hustlers, but on a deeper level he has been running from his fear that his wife Claudette is about to end their marriage. Chazz’s death is witnessed by an elderly French Jewess whose son’s heart was broken ten years earlier when his fiancée Claudette ran off with Chazz. Meanwhile, the two train hustlers’ younger brother, GianCarlo, yearns for a normal adolescence and attempts to escape the criminal life. Hoping he has already escaped that life is the local ferry pilot, an ex-con who has been raising a little boy named Claudio as his grandchild ever since Claudio appeared, the scars of previous abuse evident, on his doorstep. Hopelessly hopeful, Claudio and GianCarlo, who have their own interactions, face dark fates that readers will find themselves caring about long after the book’s more sophisticated broken hearts fade. One such broken heart is Sophie, a young photographer who once photographed Chazz. On the coast shooting pictures of a famous Italian chef, Sophie finds herself the fourth corner of a romantic triangle when she becomes involved with the chef’s brother, who is in love with the chef’s wife. In the final story, Chazz’s widow Claudette shows up to tie together the love triangles, mixed messages between lovers and lost opportunities.
With Maeve Binchy’s talent for interconnected stories, and her tendency toward the sentimental, Holthe is not afraid to enter darker the waters in which her characters sometimes swim but often drown. A talent to watch.Pub Date: May 8, 2007
ISBN: 978-0-307-35185-2
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2007
Categories: GENERAL FICTION
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BOOK REVIEW
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
Categories: GENERAL FICTION
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BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PROFILES
PERSPECTIVES
Lifelong, conflicted friendship of two women is the premise of Hannah’s maudlin latest (Magic Hour, 2006, etc.), again set in Washington State.
Tallulah “Tully” Hart, father unknown, is the daughter of a hippie, Cloud, who makes only intermittent appearances in her life. Tully takes refuge with the family of her “best friend forever,” Kate Mularkey, who compares herself unfavorably with Tully, in regards to looks and charisma. In college, “TullyandKate” pledge the same sorority and major in communications. Tully has a life goal for them both: They will become network TV anchorwomen. Tully lands an internship at KCPO-TV in Seattle and finagles a producing job for Kate. Kate no longer wishes to follow Tully into broadcasting and is more drawn to fiction writing, but she hesitates to tell her overbearing friend. Meanwhile a love triangle blooms at KCPO: Hard-bitten, irresistibly handsome, former war correspondent Johnny is clearly smitten with Tully. Expecting rejection, Kate keeps her infatuation with Johnny secret. When Tully lands a reporting job with a Today-like show, her career shifts into hyperdrive. Johnny and Kate had started an affair once Tully moved to Manhattan, and when Kate gets pregnant with daughter Marah, they marry. Kate is content as a stay-at-home mom, but frets about being Johnny’s second choice and about her unrealized writing ambitions. Tully becomes Seattle’s answer to Oprah. She hires Johnny, which spells riches for him and Kate. But Kate’s buttons are fully depressed by pitched battles over slutwear and curfews with teenaged Marah, who idolizes her godmother Tully. In an improbable twist, Tully invites Kate and Marah to resolve their differences on her show, only to blindside Kate by accusing her, on live TV, of overprotecting Marah. The BFFs are sundered. Tully’s latest attempt to salvage Cloud fails: The incorrigible, now geriatric hippie absconds once more. Just as Kate develops a spine, she’s given some devastating news. Will the friends reconcile before it’s too late?
Dated sermonizing on career versus motherhood, and conflict driven by characters’ willed helplessness, sap this tale of poignancy.Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2008
ISBN: 978-0-312-36408-3
Page Count: 496
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2007
Categories: GENERAL FICTION | FAMILY LIFE & FRIENDSHIP
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