Findley’s penchant for busy plotting is as evident here as in his earlier work (The Piano Man’s Daughter, 1996, etc.). This time, though, when a Tiresias-like character locks horns with analyst Carl Jung in the latter’s Zurich clinic, one expects the story to be rich with experiences past and present, conscious and unconscious. In a spring snowstorm in 1912, two weary travelers from London arrive at the famous BÅrgholzli Clinic—one, gaunt and mute, to be treated for suicidal intentions; the other, charming and lovely, to supervise. But Pilgrim, the suicidal one, has reason for his death wish: He can’t die, no matter how often he tries. His escort, Lady Quartermaine, knows this, yet she still wants to rescue him from despair. Shrewdly, Jung gets Pilgrim to talk again and also wheedles out of Lady Quartermaine one of Pilgrim’s journals, which reveals that the patient, a famous art historian, was acquainted more intimately with Leonardo da Vinci than seems possible. Jung can't accept the evidence that Pilgrim, in a previous form, was Leonardo’s lover and the model for the Mona Lisa, instead viewing this as an exceptional fantasy. When Her Ladyship dies in an avalanche, however, and leaves Pilgrim’s other journals to the bewildered doctor, he is soon out of his depth. The journals document Pilgrim’s lives as a 16th-century Spanish shepherd befriended by Saint Teresa; a stained-glass craftsman working on the windows of Chartres Cathedral; and a nobleman enjoying the action during the siege of Troy. Pilgrim’s adversarial attitude and Jung’s affair with someone at the clinic keep the psychiatrist from making progress with his patient. Eventually, Pilgrim turns violent and escapes, to fulfill what he sees as his final obligations. Some clever turns and echoes of Mann’s Magic Mountain, but in the end, Pilgrim’s many lives make him hard to know, and his nemesis Jung, for all his ambition, seems more inclined to chase skirts than such truth as might exist in the puzzle his patient embodies. (Author tour)
Pub Date: Jan. 8, 2000
ISBN: 0-06-019197-X
Page Count: 496
Publisher: HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 1999
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
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
