by William Walsh ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 3, 2015
An important, insightful account.
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Walsh’s debut novel explores the volatile relationship between justice and violence.
The story begins with an inexperienced police detective interrogating a murder suspect who quickly confesses. Allen Benson cops to the crime, explaining that he killed an unrepentant rapist who had escaped conviction because of some legal technicality. However, Benson also admits to killing scores of others, shocking Detective Michaels, the police interrogator. Benson insists on telling her the story of his life—the whole story, beginning with his orphaned childhood—in a clear attempt to unburden himself of his traumatic past. He begins by admitting that he killed a childhood friend who had become a junkie and stole money from his mother. Then, while serving in an elite unit during the Vietnam War, he murdered his superior officer. Each time Benson confesses to yet another murder, he claims the moral high road—they all deserved it, he defiantly claims—but even the simple act of confession demonstrates the weight his life of vigilante violence has placed upon his shoulders. Detective Michaels patiently midwifes the whole story from him and recounts her own secret pain; physically and emotionally abused by an alcoholic father, she still struggles with painful memories that stubbornly shadow her into adulthood. And while she initially responds to Benson’s confessions with abhorrence, she gradually develops sympathy for him, especially for his struggle to maintain a sense of goodness despite a life marred by ugly violence. And his penchant for violence is precisely what made him such an effective soldier. “The government of the United States had spent a lot of money to make me a living weapon,” he says. “I was already a killer when I joined. The army just smoothed out the edges.” Debut author Walsh, a former U.S. Marine who served in Iraq, sensitively portrays the paradox of the vigilante, a contradictory pairing of moral rectitude and a cynical disregard for the law. At its heart, this tale is about the great distance that often separates morality and murder as well as the emotional weariness that results from living with a conscience freighted by memories of loss and pain. Impressively, the author poignantly presents difficult material without punishing the reader.
An important, insightful account.Pub Date: Sept. 3, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-50-236898-0
Page Count: 292
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Oct. 30, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2016
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 Harper Lee ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 11, 1960
A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.
Pub Date: July 11, 1960
ISBN: 0060935464
Page Count: 323
Publisher: Lippincott
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960
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