A violent biblical story, slowed by awkward dialogue and underdeveloped characters.
A fictionalized epic about the Israelites’ entry into the ancient Middle East.
Schenck’s (World’s Greatest Artists, 2011, etc.) novel spans the biblical Exodus of the Israelites and their violent journey through Canaan (the modern day Middle East), offering an extensive story of war, alliances and divine intervention. With a particular focus on the Old Testament’s book of Joshua (or Yeshua), the book chronicles the Israelites’ difficult, albeit triumphant, journey under Yeshua’s leadership. It brings the harshness of ancient battles to life, with slashing swords and constant, unmerciful conflict. Although Yeshua’s people believe that they’re acting under the one and true God, their shortcomings under biblical law regularly result in their facing God’s wrath. Some Israelites insist that they should all return to Egypt, but as they conquer the polytheistic, frequently amoral tribes around them, the epic marches on. The story includes descriptions of famous biblical scenes, such as the conquering of Jericho, and not-so-famous ones, such as the defeat of the Amorite King Sihon, and does a good job of interweaving various Old Testament elements into a larger whole. That said, it also often features grand speeches and that tend to state the obvious, which may not appeal to modern readers: “Yes, we Reubenites are the children of Abraham who was a child of Eber, a Babylonian. However, in spite of our shared blood heritage, we will fight alongside our Yaakovite brothers until you are dead, dead, dead.” Good guys tend to be really good, at least in the eyes of God, and bad guys tend to be really bad, as in a detailed description of the sexual depravities of ancient Jericho that make even the most decadent days of Rome seem tame. As a result, this retelling of these ancient stories offers little new complexity.
A violent biblical story, slowed by awkward dialogue and underdeveloped characters.Pub Date: Dec. 13, 2013
ISBN: 1491713119
Page Count: 828
Publisher: iUniverse
Review Posted Online: Oct. 16, 2013
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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
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SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
APPRECIATIONS
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
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BOOK REVIEW
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