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THE WISEST MAN IN AMERICA

After a couple of works with mixed results (Chekhov's Sister, 1990, etc.), Wetherell hits his stride as he comes home to his native New Hampshire to investigate elusive truth and wisdom. This is the story of two men: Max Thomas, a respected newspaper columnist, and Mr. Ferris, a New Hampshire logger. In 1952, the New Hampshire primary began generating national interest, and Max decided to make it the subject of his debut column in ``the country's most prestigious newspaper.'' After Max's car got stuck on a lonely dirt road, he stumbled upon Ferris, and the two spent the day discussing everything from his WW II service to his extensive self-education to ``his conception of himself as a totally free man.'' Max had the foresight to see that the nation was moving in Ferris's direction and asked Ferris who he thought would win the primary. Ferris bet on Ike, and Max followed through with a column containing Ferris's prediction every primary thereafter. The novel takes place before the 1996 election. Much has happened to them during their decades of friendship, and in clear and direct language, the two recount the relevant moments of their lives and how these experiences shaped who they are today: their imperfect families; the deaths of their wives; the failure of Ferris's friendship with a Russian POW; Max's discovery that his revered marine-biologist wife had falsified data to prove the fragility of the sea; Ferris's fond remembrances of a brief and secret affair with Max's wife; and Max's realization that his supposedly faithful wife was not all she seemed. These moments lead both of these opinionated men to admit that they don't know a thing compared to all that they once purported to know. And this newfound wisdom frees them in the most surprising way. Potent commentary, as two classically American men struggle to keep their sense of alienation from their country at bay.

Pub Date: March 24, 1995

ISBN: 0-87451-700-1

Page Count: 242

Publisher: N/A

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 1994

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A LITTLE LIFE

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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THE CATCHER IN THE RYE

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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