A gripping existential thriller in the vein of Vikram Chandra’s Sacred Games (2006).
A jaded crime novelist retires to a Turkish village on the brink of civil war.
The clichés of noir literature are infamously tricky to navigate, and many of those archetypes and tropes surface in this elegant crime novel by Turkish journalist and author Altan, his first to be translated into English. Thankfully, the author uses both characters and devices to marvelous effect, creating a hallucinatory fiction that reads as much like The Stranger (1942) as it does The Godfather (1969). It begins with a man admitting he has just murdered someone. From there, our nameless narrator (a crime writer, naturally) spins a dizzying tale about the small Turkish village where he enters semiretirement. A world-weary, womanizing writer is a well-worn chestnut, but Altan breathes life into his virile hero with interesting flaws. Taking his place as the “coffeehouse sage” of the village, the writer quickly becomes enmeshed by its internal strife. He falls in love with Zuhal, a woman whose heart belongs to the corrupt mayor, Mustafa Gürz. This doesn’t stop him from dallying with Kamile (the femme fatale wife of a local crime boss) or frequenting the bedroom of Sümbül (a prostitute with a heart of gold). It’s a town laden with gang violence, much of it sparked by the rumor of a Roman treasure buried underneath a Christian church. “It might seem strange to an outsider but after living in the town for long enough you got used to the killing and the fact that certain killers go free,” Altan writes. “It even begins to seem natural for them to shoot each other in broad daylight.” The book isn’t without flaws—Altan is enamored with internet chats between our hero and Zuhal, and readers seeking a traditional whodunit may be left wanting. But readers looking for a contemplative, twisty thriller will find this one unique and satisfying.
A gripping existential thriller in the vein of Vikram Chandra’s Sacred Games (2006).Pub Date: April 18, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-60945-277-0
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Europa Editions
Review Posted Online: Feb. 5, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2017
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
Dated sermonizing on career versus motherhood, and conflict driven by characters’ willed helplessness, sap this tale of...
Lifelong, conflicted friendship of two women is the premise of Hannah’s maudlin latest (Magic Hour, 2006, etc.), again set in Washington State.
Tallulah “Tully” Hart, father unknown, is the daughter of a hippie, Cloud, who makes only intermittent appearances in her life. Tully takes refuge with the family of her “best friend forever,” Kate Mularkey, who compares herself unfavorably with Tully, in regards to looks and charisma. In college, “TullyandKate” pledge the same sorority and major in communications. Tully has a life goal for them both: They will become network TV anchorwomen. Tully lands an internship at KCPO-TV in Seattle and finagles a producing job for Kate. Kate no longer wishes to follow Tully into broadcasting and is more drawn to fiction writing, but she hesitates to tell her overbearing friend. Meanwhile a love triangle blooms at KCPO: Hard-bitten, irresistibly handsome, former war correspondent Johnny is clearly smitten with Tully. Expecting rejection, Kate keeps her infatuation with Johnny secret. When Tully lands a reporting job with a Today-like show, her career shifts into hyperdrive. Johnny and Kate had started an affair once Tully moved to Manhattan, and when Kate gets pregnant with daughter Marah, they marry. Kate is content as a stay-at-home mom, but frets about being Johnny’s second choice and about her unrealized writing ambitions. Tully becomes Seattle’s answer to Oprah. She hires Johnny, which spells riches for him and Kate. But Kate’s buttons are fully depressed by pitched battles over slutwear and curfews with teenaged Marah, who idolizes her godmother Tully. In an improbable twist, Tully invites Kate and Marah to resolve their differences on her show, only to blindside Kate by accusing her, on live TV, of overprotecting Marah. The BFFs are sundered. Tully’s latest attempt to salvage Cloud fails: The incorrigible, now geriatric hippie absconds once more. Just as Kate develops a spine, she’s given some devastating news. Will the friends reconcile before it’s too late?
Dated sermonizing on career versus motherhood, and conflict driven by characters’ willed helplessness, sap this tale of poignancy.Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2008
ISBN: 978-0-312-36408-3
Page Count: 496
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2007
BOOK TO SCREEN
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