Jo’s intelligence and talent make it hard to accept her entanglement with one-dimensional Ivan in this sexless romance.
A jewelry designer’s intriguing new commission expands into an overplotted adventure from mystery author Barclay (A Final Discord, 2005, etc.).
Wealthy businessman Ivan Digby, who’s purchased the Fieldingley Necklace, asks Jo Radcliff to use its stones in an updated design for his ditzy fiancée, Miri Gale. Jo is reluctant to break up the historic piece with its perfectly matched Burmese rubies, but the project excites her imagination, and she designs a delicate necklace that meets her finicky client’s approval. When she takes it to her gemologist friend Ben Webber to check it for flaws, they’re shocked to discover that the rubies, though they date from the 1800s, are man-made. A furious Ivan sues Betsy Fieldingley, a talented artist who used the money from the purchase to buy herself accommodations. Miri, meanwhile, breaks off her engagement and, encouraged by Jo’s self-centered thespian brother, attempts to leverage her Vanna White–style job into an acting career. Finding Shakespeare over her head, she moves to a new handler, who uses the publicity over the necklace to find work more suited to her talents. And Jo, not to be outdone, drifts into an affair with the devastated Ivan, who’s still besotted with Miri, even though Jo’s really attracted to Betsy’s grandson Tim. The publicity Betsy receives leads to a resurgence in popularity for her botanical paintings. But Tim, incensed about the lawsuit, accuses Jo—whose original design is being reproduced in a limited edition with semiprecious stones—of selling out for publicity. When Miri and Ivan get back together, Jo, still hoping to derail the lawsuit, designs some jewelry for the wedding. She hopes Ivan will accept some of Betsy’s paintings in return for dropping the suit. Whew.
Jo’s intelligence and talent make it hard to accept her entanglement with one-dimensional Ivan in this sexless romance.Pub Date: Jan. 1, 2007
ISBN: 0-7278-6413-0
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Severn House
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2006
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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