A suspense debut—from medical writer Ferguson and Graedon (coauthor of The People's Pharmacy)—in which spectacular cerebrovascular accidents fell Californians like ninepins. The deaths appear to be an unpleasant side effect of a new herpes medicine. Ultradedicated emergency-room physician and media star Gabe Austin is about to hang up his bloody scrubs and enjoy a long deferred date with old flame Kate, herself an ultradedicated physician and world-class marathoner, when an ambulance delivers a young woman with a killer headache and blood pressure through the roof. Ultradedication, alas, is not enough to save the young woman's life, and the hitherto healthy (save for the odd bulimic episode) girl succumbs in the middle of a CAT scan. A baffled Dr. Austin takes time off from his emergency room, his TV spots, and his column and flies off to a medical convention in Reno with Kate, who now works as chief wellness manager for a huge drug firm. After extending professional courtesies with Kate in her luxurious suite, Gabe gets some computer information about other otherwise healthy Californians who have, like his late friend, suddenly fallen victim to strokes. The only thing the victims had in common was a dose of a new herpes medicine made by, uh-oh, Kate's firm—which will go to any length to protect its investment in the drug. Among the firm's weapons are a lawyer who most unpleasantly resembles the late Roy Cohn and his beefy driver. Valiant docs. Vile corporations. Bad medicine.
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1992
ISBN: 0-671-74869-6
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Pocket
Review Posted Online: May 20, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1992
Categories: GENERAL FICTION
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BOOK REVIEW
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.
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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. 22, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2015
Categories: GENERAL FICTION
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BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PROFILES
PERSPECTIVES
Five friends meet on their first day of kindergarten at the exclusive Atwood School and remain lifelong friends through tragedy and triumph.
When Gabby, Billy, Izzie, Andy and Sean meet in the toy kitchen of the kindergarten classroom on their first day of school, no one can know how strong the group’s friendship will remain. Despite their different personalities and interests, the five grow up together and become even closer as they come into their own talents and life paths. But tragedy will strike and strike again. Family troubles, abusive parents, drugs, alcohol, stress, grief and even random bad luck will put pressure on each of them individually and as a group. Known for her emotional romances, Steel makes a bit of a departure with this effort that follows a group of friends through young adulthood. But even as one tragedy after another befalls the friends, the impact of the events is blunted by a distant narrative style that lacks emotional intensity.
More about grief and tragedy than romance.Pub Date: July 24, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-385-34321-3
Page Count: 322
Publisher: Delacorte
Review Posted Online: Nov. 14, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2012
Categories: GENERAL FICTION
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