A short, resonant novel of masculinity and fatherhood.
Thorpe’s novel tells the story of a man in crisis on a pilgrimage to Hemingway’s grave.
Wes Haas is a novelist and professor challenged by the academy on his definition of “literary” and his inability to intuit the meaning of “competence.” In response, Haas has undertaken a road trip to Ketchum, Idaho, to see the grave of Ernest Hemingway, his earliest and most important influence as a writer. On the way, he picks up his son, Linus, a 13-year-old Haas hasn’t seen in nearly a year who lives with Haas’ ex-wife in Montana. As he rolls through the small towns of the northwestern United States, Haas is confronted with the myriad ghosts of his present and past: his failed marriage, his stagnant career, and his relationship with a mercurial ballet dancer named Aletheia. The result is a mashup of campus novel and road book, a movable inquiry into the crafts of writing and life, and a quest for, as the title implies, competence. The premise may seem a bit clumsy: readers may wonder if Hemingway isn’t the sort of writer whom the young are meant to love but then outgrow. Thorpe attempts to address this issue early on: “By reading short stories like ‘Big Two Hearted River’ and ‘Now I Lay Me,’ Haas learned the value of actual words that exist on the flattened sheet of paper, not merely intended ones…his pilgrimage to Hemingway’s grave did not then seem a stupid cliché to him, but a fitting tribute to a human being who had changed his life.” Even so, Thorpe isn’t doing the expected Hemingway impression of staccato lines and muscular prose (though Haas’ present narrative is intercut with flashbacks from his past rendered in Hemingway-esque italics). This is a novel about attempting to move beyond one’s influences and even moving beyond one’s past mistakes. Though the ghost of Hemingway hangs heavily over the book, Thorpe manages to carve out some admirable literary territory of his own. The reader discovers not a larger-than-life Papa Hemingway, but a relatable man coming to terms with his own adequacy in a world of vague expectations.
A short, resonant novel of masculinity and fatherhood.Pub Date: Jan. 4, 2015
ISBN: 978-1503133808
Page Count: 218
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: May 11, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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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