A novel of grief, love, and truth that offers insights about a family and a satisfying resolution.
A daughter comes to terms with family secrets as she deals with the effects of two tragedies from New York’s recent history.
In this novel, Impellizzeri (Lawyer Interrupted, 2016, etc.) follows two parallel narratives, those of Lu Roselli, dealing with the aftermath of a disaster and unraveling family mysteries, and her mother, Mari Guarez Roselli, a Guatemalan immigrant thinking back over her life while trapped in a coma. In 2012, Lu, ambivalent about a planned trip to her mother’s homeland, misses her flight, which crashes into her Queens neighborhood shortly after takeoff, leaving Mari injured and unconscious. Lu deals with her survivor’s guilt—an emotion she has lived with for more than a decade after her father and twin sister died on 9/11—while waiting to see if Mari will recover. Lu makes plans for the baby she did not know that her mother was carrying and sorts through the growing riddles of her family history and her complicated mother-daughter relationship. As Lu’s narrative progresses, the chapters alternate with those told from Mari’s perspective, flashbacks to her experiences in Guatemala and New York that serve to answer the questions Lu raises. Lu eventually travels to Guatemala, where she meets the nun who tells her the story Mari is revealing to the reader and also meets a man who becomes the first friend she has made in years. Impellizzeri draws on Guatemalan traditions to develop the book’s recurring motifs, particularly the practice of sharing worries with tiny dolls and the Mayan calendar projection that the end of the world will occur in December 2012, demonstrating a solid knowledge of the country’s history and culture. Thanks to Mari’s narration, the reader ends up with a more complete picture of the Roselli family than Lu does, an unusual choice but one that makes for an emotionally rewarding conclusion. The prose is serviceable, and the plot, though driven by complex layers of feelings and relationships, is fast-paced and not unnecessarily complicated.
A novel of grief, love, and truth that offers insights about a family and a satisfying resolution.Pub Date: Dec. 1, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-942545-65-1
Page Count: 312
Publisher: Wyatt-MacKenzie Publishing
Review Posted Online: Aug. 31, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
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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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