An overwrought pastiche of muddled thinking.
An aging writer relates the lessons she’s learned from life—an unconvincing mix of the politically correct and fabulous—while navigating the Colorado and Amazon rivers.
Kate Talkingtree, the narrator of Walker's latest message-driven story (The Way Forward is With a Broken Heart, 2000, etc.), has much in common with her creator: she’s a successful writer, an African-American, and a feminist exercised about all the approved issues of the day, racism, environmentalism, and colonialism. And while Walker still lyrically evokes place and mood, the underlying smug preachiness, the unconvincing experiences, and the idiosyncratic thinking make this more a self-indulgent fantasy than an intellectually provocative tale. Kate’s search for meaning begins when, haunted by a dream of a dry river and dissatisfied with her current life, she dismantles her altar honoring deities as varied as Jesus, Che Guevara, and friend Sarah Jane, and joins an all-women’s group rafting the Colorado. On this voyage Kate regurgitates all the words from her life, all her memories of past marriages, then returns home to her blue house and male lover, African-American artist Yolo, determined to live as a virgin so she can continue her spiritual explorations. She next joins a mixed group of seekers who all have stories to share (think rape, abuse, addiction) as they seek to encounter the Grandmother and drink her healing medicine while sailing down the Amazon. Kate has to take harsh purgatives until the guide determines that she’s ready to encounter the universal Grandmother, a large tree. The Grandmother advises against interplanetary travel, tells her about the life-forms from outer space that fled to earth and live in human DNA, and preaches the oneness of life. None of which fazes Kate, who returns home to Yolo, now back from traveling in Hawaii, where he learned from the natives to honor the old ancestral ways that are uncontaminated by such white pollutants as sugar, tobacco, and coffee. Purged and instructed, they next make resolutions for the future.
An overwrought pastiche of muddled thinking.Pub Date: April 1, 2004
ISBN: 1-4000-6173-3
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2003
BOOK REVIEW
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
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with...
Talk-show queen takes tumble as millions jeer.
Nora Bridges is a wildly popular radio spokesperson for family-first virtues, but her loyal listeners don't know that she walked out on her husband and teenaged daughters years ago and didn't look back. Now that a former lover has sold racy pix of naked Nora and horny himself to a national tabloid, her estranged daughter Ruby, an unsuccessful stand-up comic in Los Angeles, has been approached to pen a tell-all. Greedy for the fat fee she's been promised, Ruby agrees and heads for the San Juan Islands, eager to get reacquainted with the mom she plans to betray. Once in the family homestead, nasty Ruby alternately sulks and glares at her mother, who is temporarily wheelchair-bound as a result of a post-scandal car crash. Uncaring, Ruby begins writing her side of the story when she's not strolling on the beach with former sweetheart Dean Sloan, the son of wealthy socialites who basically ignored him and his gay brother Eric. Eric, now dying of cancer and also in a wheelchair, has returned to the island. This dismal threesome catch up on old times, recalling their childhood idylls on the island. After Ruby's perfect big sister Caroline shows up, there's another round of heartfelt talk. Nora gradually reveals the truth about her unloving husband and her late father's alcoholism, which led her to seek the approval of others at the cost of her own peace of mind. And so on. Ruby is aghast to discover that she doesn't know everything after all, but Dean offers her subdued comfort. Happy endings await almost everyone—except for readers of this nobly preachy snifflefest.
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with syrupy platitudes about life and love.Pub Date: March 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-609-60737-5
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2001
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