A surreal, sometimes-difficult narrative that will reward patient readers.
A university lawyer takes care of a monkey with humanlike tendencies in this debut novel.
Attorney Jim Drewry is in charge of monitoring a university study in which researchers are splicing human DNA with monkeys’ to find a cure for Parkinson’s disease. When a student involved in the study objects to the animals’ treatment, she opts to abandon it, and she leaves one of the genetically altered monkeys, named Eve, in Jim’s care. He’s initially reluctant to keep the animal, but then he begins to recognize what an extraordinary creature Eve is. She cries in a way that seems to convey emotional distress, a uniquely human expression, and her behavior makes Jim believe that she’s on some kind of “spiritual journey.” His son, Buck, and wife, Grace, take to Eve as well, treating her like an odd combination of pet and family member. As Jim interacts with the monkey, he also deals with the recent death of his son Thomas and goes on a troubling emotional quest. He begins to believe in alternate universes and questions whether it’s in humanity’s nature to seek spiritual knowledge. Although his preacher friend, Barry, attempts to help him, he seems overwhelmed by questions. During his moments of déjà vu, he worries that events are actually repeating themselves or that they’re occurring in other universes. (It doesn’t help that Jim is less-than-meticulous about taking his medication for mental problems.) It’s a lot for readers to take in, but Singer is a deft storyteller who engages with thorny religious and scientific questions while also crafting memorable characters. Some of Singer’s gambles don’t pay off completely—such as when he revisits past scenes in order to disorient readers or intersperses quasi-historical retellings of Jesus’ time on Earth—but their bravery is admirable, nonetheless. The disjointed narrative is likely to alienate some readers, especially near the end, when it’s increasingly difficult to know what’s actually happening and what’s a product of Jim’s imagination. Others, however, may enjoy Singer’s bold moves.
A surreal, sometimes-difficult narrative that will reward patient readers.Pub Date: Feb. 13, 2015
ISBN: 978-0692342435
Page Count: 218
Publisher: Cactus Jack Press
Review Posted Online: April 2, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
BOOK REVIEW
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
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PROFILES
PERSPECTIVES
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