Three black sisters reunite in their Georgia hometown to embrace, scream, smoke, contemplate suicide, and swap clothes while preparing for their mother's funeral—in a rambling follow-up to Ansa's Baby of the Family (1989). Esther Lovejoy has died at last, and her three daughters- -Betty, the ultra-reliable owner of a pair of beauty salons; Emily, the lonely, unstable researcher who longs for love; and Annie Ruth, the pretty youngest whose job as an L.A. TV anchorwoman is driving her nuts—rush home to begin rehashing their traumatic childhood memories in the hope of laying them to rest. Ruled with an iron hand by Esther, who insisted they call her ``Mudear'' (baby talk for ``my dear''), the three Lovejoy girls learned the hard way to hold their heads high, work hard, and, whatever happened, never to trust a man—even while Mudear herself spent her days as a voluntary shut-in, watching TV, taking naps, and wearing negligees while her husband worked in the chalk mines to support her. Tormented by a mother whose belief that ``she was above the laws of God and man,'' to say nothing of her habit of gardening only by moonlight, caused tongues to wag all over town, the Lovejoy girls nevertheless grew up to forge successful, independent lives while their father faded into the background, muttering about ``womens taking over [his] house.'' As each daughter (and, occasionally, the shrill, judgmental ghost of Mudear herself) recollects those long- gone years, the source of Mudear's familial power is revealed, the daughters' lifelong resentments aired, and the father's suffering at last relieved, resulting in a happy funeral for one and all. A tale of dysfunction that opens with a bang—but repetitive, episodic, and, in the end, less illuminating than it might have been.
Pub Date: July 26, 1993
ISBN: 0-15-192553-4
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 1993
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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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