Not Makine’s best; still, a worthy lyrical addition to his Proustian tapestry depicting a vanished country’s deeply...
The legacy of a century of geopolitical conflict is analyzed with a tad too much discursive insistence in this otherwise resonant, richly plotted, and quite moving fifth novel from the Russian-born (French-language) author (Dreams of My Russian Summers, 1997, etc.).
The narrator, whose identity is (appropriately) at first concealed from us, addresses a likewise unidentified woman as he describes various events in his family’s past—returning repeatedly to the image of “a child hidden in the mountains of the Caucasus” and being carried away from danger by a white-haired woman. As his narrative loops forward and backward in time, we learn that the narrator had been a battlefield doctor treating casualties in Afghanistan and other “small wars,” and subsequently was employed to monitor the activities of freelance arms dealers—presumably as a KGB agent during the Soviet Union’s chaotic final months. The parallel (earlier) story that emerges from his exchanges, with the aforementioned confidante, of “long underground passages of our remembered past” builds an even more graphic and gripping picture of a family involved in several generations’ political and military struggles: from an independent villager’s resistance to Red Army tyranny in the 1920s to his son’s hallucinatory years of service on WWII battlefields to the narrator’s climactic pursuit (related in convincing espionage-thriller fashion) of the double agent he blames for the death of the woman he had loved. The story’s meditative romantic tone and fragmented structure make comparisons with Ondaatje’s The English Patient inevitable. But Makine’s is a lesser work: a lament for the carnage spawned by nationalistic frenzy and sheer human folly that’s too often explicitly preachy, and elevated by spectacularly suggestive images (a starving, riderless horse tethered to a tree; “the eyes of a woman, large and sorrowful . . . [captured in] a fresco blackened by fire”).
Not Makine’s best; still, a worthy lyrical addition to his Proustian tapestry depicting a vanished country’s deeply conflicted past and present.Pub Date: Aug. 1, 2001
ISBN: 1-55970-571-X
Page Count: 264
Publisher: Arcade
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2001
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
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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