This book paints a believable, if occasionally lackluster, picture of turbulent American lives.
A debut novel chronicles one family’s mishaps in the 1960s.
This story begins with Frank Bellincioni explaining to his 12-year-old great-nephew, Michael, that, despite outward appearances, their family has not always been as upstanding as it might seem. Michael imagines no one in the clan has ever done anything “dangerous or exciting,” though Frank insists it is one “bat-shit crazy tribe.” Frank then recounts the tribe’s colorful history. In 1958, he, his parents, and his two siblings move from Chicago to the nearby suburb of Prospect Heights. Although Prospect Heights is only 45 minutes out of the city, it is nearly a world away from what they know. While dealing with life “in the middle of nowhere” is not easy, they begin to cope. Frank’s father becomes a bartender with a side gig as a bookie, and Frank’s mother makes dresses, though at one point the local police suspect she is running a brothel. Along with the family’s relocation come the changing times of the ’60s. Frank even finds himself involved in the protests outside of the 1968 Democratic Convention, and his eighth-grade trip to Washington, D.C., winds up engulfed in raunchy, sexual liberation-era pandemonium. They are stories not just of a city family’s adjustment to suburban life, but also of that clan’s attempts to keep up with the world around it. Some of Monteleone’s tales deftly illustrate a bygone era, as when Frank’s brother goes behind his parents’ backs to change the specifications on his custom-ordered 1964 Buick Skylark. Other events, such as Frank’s father falling through a plasterboard ceiling, might play well at a family reunion but they do not garner much excitement in a work of fiction. The stories are relayed in a conversational, slightly crude style, as when Frank explains how his parents made sure his siblings “got their butts to church every Sunday” and how Pat Booth, one of his mother’s friends, hypnotized men with her “incredible rack.” Such a style produces a captivating air of authenticity, and the reader is likely to feel at least some connection with this family caught up in tempestuous times.
This book paints a believable, if occasionally lackluster, picture of turbulent American lives.Pub Date: July 25, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-5466-0207-1
Page Count: 138
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Oct. 31, 2017
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
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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