A creatively original, character-driven companion volume fusing biographical sketches with gay sexuality.
A prequel explores the early lives of four gay men before they dramatically intersected.
Prolific author Jack (A High Country Tale, 2016, etc.) revisits the main characters at the center of his impressive preceding novel and presents their separate histories prior to becoming a close-knit group of friends and lovers. Split into four volumes, the engrossing saga devotes some attention to extraneous details but focuses a great deal on each man’s carnal coming-of-age. The compilation begins with Lucas Cevennes graphically describing his very first same-sex sexual encounter, an event he considers an “introduction to the Devil Incarnate.” Admitting his gay feelings early and spending his youth bound within the strict confines of a Christian upbringing, Luke pines for personal freedom while exploring other boys’ bodies at summer camp—with unrequited teenage affections blindly guided by his bulky “ever-ready snake.” Eventually, he undertakes the challenges of medical school. In the second section, Cal Broadhearst’s Southern youth born “of the blood of Princes” is distinguished by impressive manners and reserved behavior yet marred by episodes of extreme bullying. These attributes produce a refined and savvy black man talented at competitive wrestling and software engineering and masterful at “the erotic boogie and prance” of dance-floor gyrations. Jake Marshall’s third section depicts a bucolic Vermont heritage and a fatherless boyhood spoiled by a mean stepdad though greatly redeemed by male friends and frolicsome fishing trips. He is mentored by a neighboring elderly couple who invest in and promote his future in medicine. At college in Texas, Jake embraces his scholarly prowess and a newfound fondness for same-sex romance after meeting Cal. Jeremy Kell rounds out the vivid profiles as a boy born into an enormous brood of children who raises goats and becomes obsessed with a Jamaican “Rasta Mon.” Later, as a teenage father plagued in his young adulthood with “lonesomeness for a significant peer,” he braves the future with hope for his daughter and a loving male partner for himself. Fans of Jack’s original novel will be delighted to discover the humble and enticing beginnings of these four gay men, their backgrounds, and how their lives progressed up to and including their impactful intersection in A High Country Tale. The author takes his time with all of the quartet’s members, meticulously exploring their internal struggles and early ambitions as well as the ways their young lives become dramatically influenced by latent homosexuality and negatively hobbled by the strict religious leanings of parents and family members. While the narrative does have a tendency to be clunky, overwritten, or just plain cheesy in spots (Luke’s campground sexual curiosity was a “nascent stirring of endocrine undertones providing provocation,” while Cal’s libidinous “cobra informed the higher head”), Jack knows how to illustrate his characters well and make each one engaging on a variety of levels.
A creatively original, character-driven companion volume fusing biographical sketches with gay sexuality.Pub Date: April 11, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-9980990-4-0
Page Count: 374
Publisher: Time Tunnel Media
Review Posted Online: June 7, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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