The action-laden plot leaves some characters in the dust but retains a high-speed tempo.
In this debut thriller, a trio of linked stories follows a bevy of characters driven by greed and vengeance, all sparked by the Irish mob’s heinous deeds.
In the first tale, “Rear View Mirror,” Francis Cranford, living a lowly life, tracks down his separated-at-birth twin, Kenneth Redman, a military man who has accumulated quite a fortune. But Irish mobster Hugo Henry has a plan: he offers Francis millions if he swaps identities with Kenneth and gets the mob access to his twin’s estate. Francis, however, has a scheme of his own, which entails keeping his brother’s riches all to himself. “Silk Road to Atlantis” picks up with Nikko Sporkas, who played a part in Francis’ swindle. Nikko seeks revenge in Ireland against the Irish mob, whom he blames for his father’s death. Hugo’s older brother Tyrone, meanwhile, arranges wife Cynthia’s abduction to demand ransom from her ambassador father and for another, far worse reason. Nikko ultimately teams up with Cynthia, as well as Kenneth’s niece and goddaughter, Jude and Kimmie, to face off against Tyrone. The final tale, “Subterfuge,” finds Nikko and Cynthia back in the U.S., where Nikko gets in the marijuana business with Berton James. Bert, however, is working for the Mafia, while Irish and Russian mobsters make matters worse, regardless of whether they’re aligned with the Italians. The three stories in this novel are distinctive but have a strong connection; protagonists vary, but the characters have clear associations and the Irish mob ties them together. Hoffman’s breakneck pace is commendable and often surprises with sudden deaths and shifting motives, like Nikko forgoing retribution for simple avarice. Breezing through the stories, however, favors the plot over characters. Camille Bisset’s first-person perspective, for example, introduces readers to Kenneth, but despite being his new girlfriend, Camille practically disappears from the story. Characters appear in the novel with Hoffman providing little development, and the author likewise doesn’t invest much in relationships, so a potentially interesting romance between Nikko and Cynthia is over before it has started. Still, the surfeit of characters is easy to follow, while the baddies— Irish, terrorists, etc.—are an unmistakable menace.
The action-laden plot leaves some characters in the dust but retains a high-speed tempo.Pub Date: Jan. 21, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-692-32567-4
Page Count: 410
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Dec. 14, 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 strict report, worthy of sympathy.
A violent surfacing of adolescence (which has little in common with Tarkington's earlier, broadly comic, Seventeen) has a compulsive impact.
"Nobody big except me" is the dream world of Holden Caulfield and his first person story is down to the basic, drab English of the pre-collegiate. For Holden is now being bounced from fancy prep, and, after a vicious evening with hall- and roommates, heads for New York to try to keep his latest failure from his parents. He tries to have a wild evening (all he does is pay the check), is terrorized by the hotel elevator man and his on-call whore, has a date with a girl he likes—and hates, sees his 10 year old sister, Phoebe. He also visits a sympathetic English teacher after trying on a drunken session, and when he keeps his date with Phoebe, who turns up with her suitcase to join him on his flight, he heads home to a hospital siege. This is tender and true, and impossible, in its picture of the old hells of young boys, the lonesomeness and tentative attempts to be mature and secure, the awful block between youth and being grown-up, the fright and sickness that humans and their behavior cause the challenging, the dramatization of the big bang. It is a sorry little worm's view of the off-beat of adult pressure, of contemporary strictures and conformity, of sentiment….
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.Pub Date: June 15, 1951
ISBN: 0316769177
Page Count: -
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1951
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
APPRECIATIONS
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