by Warren Terry ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 15, 2011
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Agencies and emissaries spanning the globe hope to thwart an assassination attempt on the president of the United States in the second novel featuring retired CIA agent Ike Blass (The Leningrad Affair, 2011).
British agency MI6 sends operatives to Madrid with an assignment to subvert a terrorist plot that’s already been initiated. One of the terrorists, Amin, is tracked to Cuba, where it is believed that a dying Fidel Castro’s power will soon shift to his brother, Gen. Raul Castro. It’s here in Cuba where many of the story’s players congregate: Blass enlisted to neutralize a Cuban training camp, Maria Lopez of MI6 with a vendetta, another CIA agent working covertly and Cuban exile Jesus Cantu foiling a double-cross. The author’s gleefully convoluted novel introduces characters at a rapid-fire pace, and as such, most partners don’t stay partners for long in ever-changing circumstances. Some of them even seem to disappear only to return at an integral moment, like Pedro, in the U.S. illegally (dubbing him an “exchange student”) and deported to Mexico. Blass is initially a supporting character in his own story, but he becomes the focus as he and Lopez keep their eyes on Amin before they ultimately turn toward one another. Amin, as the central villain, is more complex than his narrative counterpart, particularly with the occasional glimpses of his family’s catastrophic past. He proves charming with the ladies, an advantage when he can work it in his favor (using a woman as a means of gaining entrance to Mexico, en route to the U.S.) but simultaneously his greatest flaw, as the opposite sex tends to distract him from his operation. Blass may return in a future book, but any number of the other characters (whether or not that character makes it to the end), especially the composed, capable Jesus Cantu, could easily handle his or her own series. Story and characters that surprise and entertain on a multitude of levels will have readers drumming their fingers on Kindle screens awaiting Terry’s next novel.
Pub Date: Nov. 15, 2011
ISBN: 978-0983149743
Page Count: -
Publisher: eBooksTalkToMe
Review Posted Online: Dec. 30, 2011
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 Kristin Hannah ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 1, 2004
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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