Cheerfully lusty contemporary tale with raw energy to spare, though the crude talk and slapdash plot don’t add up to much
Sistahs and brothas, in bed and out.
As Tempest goes through her little black book, she can’t help but think about all the sorry mofos she ever had sex with. Damn, will she ever find the fly black man of her dreams? All she wants is a heterosexual, honest brother with a good job and a gigantic “grade-A, prime, FDA-approved dang-a-lang.” Is that too much to ask? No, says best friend Janessa as the two head out to a club to try their luck again. Maybe Janessa’s tight minidress will attract some worthwhile men. More likely, Tempest’s modest suit will turn them off. But Janessa seizes any excuse to escape from her parents’ stifling little apartment in the projects and her lazy, big-butt brother. Sistah-gurls gotta have some fun, even if they ain’t going to get married any time soon. Alas, the club offers the usual dismal prospects: momma’s boys, I-Know-I’m-All-That’s, and homie-sexuals. Enter Geren, a handsome, well-off, elegantly dressed brotha who doesn’t normally frequent clubs, preferring to jerk off than contend with any woman’s untoward interest in his money. But his best friend Dvonte dragged him along, so what he can do? Dvonte is a dumb-as-a-rock playa with a heart of gold. All he wants is hot and juicy punanny, and he doesn’t care if he dies getting it. Inevitably, the foursome hooks up: fastidious Geren likes demure Tempest, and fun-loving Dvonte goes for hoochiesque Janessa. It turns out that Tempest has a social conscience under her extremely healthy libido: she counsels teenaged mothers, a cause she’s drawn to owing to the back-alley abortion that left her unable to bear children. A few more talk-show complications are tossed in, plus a few sistah-gurl snifflefests about how tough life is, but all’s well for Geren & Tempest & Dvonte & Janessa.
Cheerfully lusty contemporary tale with raw energy to spare, though the crude talk and slapdash plot don’t add up to muchPub Date: June 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-7434-4289-X
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Pocket
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2002
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
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.
Sisters work together to solve a child-abandonment case.
Ellie and Julia Cates have never been close. Julia is shy and brainy; Ellie gets by on charm and looks. Their differences must be tossed aside when a traumatized young girl wanders in from the forest into their hometown in Washington. The sisters’ professional skills are put to the test. Julia is a world-renowned child psychologist who has lost her edge. She is reeling from a case that went publicly sour. Though she was cleared of all wrongdoing, Julia’s name was tarnished, forcing her to shutter her Beverly Hills practice. Ellie Barton is the local police chief in Rain Valley, who’s never faced a tougher case. This is her chance to prove she is more than just a fading homecoming queen, but a scarcity of clues and a reluctant victim make locating the girl’s parents nearly impossible. Ellie places an SOS call to her sister; she needs an expert to rehabilitate this wild-child who has been living outside of civilization for years. Confronted with her professional demons, Julia once again has the opportunity to display her talents and salvage her reputation. Hannah (The Things We Do for Love, 2004, etc.) is at her best when writing from the girl’s perspective. The feral wolf-child keeps the reader interested long after the other, transparent characters have grown tiresome. Hannah’s torturously over-written romance passages are stale, but there are surprises in store as the sisters set about unearthing Alice’s past and creating a home for her.
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.Pub Date: March 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-345-46752-3
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2005
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