A high-stakes yet thoroughly pleasant story of recovery from tragedy firmly grounded in faith.
In John’s debut novel, a religious man’s redemption comes at a high price.
The 50-year-old Rev. James Matthews is the fourth in a line of African-American preachers manning the lectern in a Jamestown, New York, church. This house of worship, built around a very special hand-carved cross, was founded by his great-grandfather shortly after the Civil War and has been a place of spiritual guidance and refuge for the community ever since. However, the latest Matthews man of the cloth is enduring a serious crisis of faith following the tragic death of his wife, Thelma, in a car accident, and his son, John, from cancer. As this brisk novel opens, James’ son has just died. Adding to the melodrama is Luke Jones, the man who was behind the wheel of the car that killed Thelma. Having served only five of the 10 years of his sentence before being paroled for good behavior, he’s back in Jamestown, plying his trade of petty theft and general bad behavior. Although James struggles to regain his faith, it’s Luke who’s most in need of redemption. Following an accident at the church, the good reverend finds that he may have developed an unusual and powerful ability to help Luke and others. Although John’s novel is entertaining, it often feels like a fait accompli. The reverend’s redemption, for example, is never truly in question; instead, readers are pulled along by the tension between him and Luke. Their fates seem linked, with neither able to easily dismiss the other. Still, the religious certitude of almost all the supporting characters feels too easy. A budding romance between the reverend and his co-worker, Maya Richards, adds additional complexity; for many years, Maya kept her amorous feelings for James to herself out of respect for the late Thelma, but when he has a brush with death, she’s emboldened to act on her feelings. Their developing relationship grounds the novel’s more paranormal elements and provides a nice counterpoint to the violence that Luke represents. In the end, it’s Maya’s love as much as anything else that helps James find redemption.
A high-stakes yet thoroughly pleasant story of recovery from tragedy firmly grounded in faith.Pub Date: May 7, 2015
ISBN: 978-0996392402
Page Count: 286
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: June 18, 2015
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
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
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