by Vel ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 23, 2014
A thoroughly idiosyncratic work of biographical collage.
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Vel combines fiction and history in this unorthodox account of the life of President Abraham Lincoln.
As previous biographies of the Great Emancipator have done, this volume recounts Lincoln’s life from his humble origins in Kentucky to his assassination in Ford’s Theatre. What Vel does differently, however, is to lay a thick filter of non-Western mythology over the tale. After a “Forewarning” that includes a few fables from the Indian subcontinent, the author introduces a frame narrative that involves a God and a Goddess traveling around the world. After they witness a slave auction that offends the Goddess’ moral sensibilities, the two deities work together to create a man who will end slavery in America. They take turns, with each offering attributes that they think will help this favored being. They don’t always agree; for example, as the Goddess reviews God’s assigned attributes, she asks, “Restlessness, melancholy and transience! Are you blessing or cursing?” The biography then begins in earnest, relating each section of Lincoln’s life as a sequence of anecdotes, quotes, and memories, often with the help of a first-person narrator. Vel inhabits the voices of various witnesses to the president’s life, from obscure figures such as Dennis Hanks (Lincoln’s second cousin) and William H. Herndon (Lincoln’s law partner and biographer) to such notables as statesman Frederick Douglass and Union Army Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman. The God and Goddess also pop back in from time to time to observe Lincoln’s progress and offer supplemental information, such as an account of abolitionist John Brown’s 1859 raid on Harpers Ferry. Vel doesn’t appear to have done any original research for the book; footnotes show that most of the historical information came from the same four Lincoln biographies. Aside from the deities and narrators, the reading experience is much more akin to that of nonfiction than fiction; the mix of diary entries, annotations, and apocrypha never fuses into any cohesive narrative. But because Vel offers almost no commentary or historical context, the book does present an intriguing picture of Abraham Lincoln as a semidivine folk hero—a product of a backward present and yet somehow removed from time.
A thoroughly idiosyncratic work of biographical collage.Pub Date: Oct. 23, 2014
ISBN: 978-1483418094
Page Count: 258
Publisher: Lulu
Review Posted Online: March 27, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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by Hanya Yanagihara ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 10, 2015
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. 21, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2015
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by Harper Lee ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 11, 1960
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
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