This mildly comic novel seems to have been written almost solely with an eye to film adaptation, probably an Adam Sandler...
No, this debut novel is not about street gangs or plastic surgeons but about a door-to-door salesman involved in hypercompetitive cutlery sales.
Jay Hauser has just completed his first year at Dartmouth. He’s trying to decide what “cool” fraternity to join, but in the midst of this major life decision he has a summer to contend with. Challenged by a potential girlfriend that he’s not cut out to be a successful knife salesman because he’s not “charming” enough, he vows both to woo customers with his charm and to beat the competition. Working out of his home in the Detroit suburbs, Jay starts hitting up his divorced parents, his grandparents, his friends’ parents and even his maid, trying to persuade them all to purchase expensive sets of Bladeworks knives. He hones his selling strategies and even develops a few of his own outside the scripted ones provided by the company. Horatio Alger–like, after the first “push period” he finds himself as the most successful salesmen in his region. Jay’s response is to become even more competitive, hoping eventually to overtake Jorge Acuña from Puerto Rico or perhaps even the legendary Reid Tallenger, who’s made more than $800,000 over the course of his career. Bladeworks managers are so impressed by Jay’s sales record that they break precedent by inviting him to speak at one of the summer sales meetings, hoping he’ll inspire others during the traditionally slow days of late summer. (The motivational motto Jay comes up with is “Kick Ass in August.”) Meanwhile, Jay is trying to balance the demands of his social life by maintaining a sexual relationship with his girlfriend Brooke while pursuing Isabelle, a girl he’d originally tagged as “not hot enough.”
This mildly comic novel seems to have been written almost solely with an eye to film adaptation, probably an Adam Sandler vehicle.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2007
ISBN: 978-1-4165-3821-9
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2007
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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