Beattie's first novel since Picturing Will (1990): a chilling, intriguing, and altogether deft exposition of the domestic life of a middle-aged college professor who finds his world cracking beneath the strain of a deluge of unsought revelations. Marshall Lockard is going through something a good deal worse than your ordinary midlife crisis. An English professor at a rather woebegone little college in New England, he plods through his coursework, hardly enthusiastic but too cynical to be disillusioned. Meanwhile, his wife, Sonja, is involved in a loveless affair with her boss; his stepmother is dying; and one of his students has flabbergasted him by telling him dreadful things about a colleague. Haplessly, Marshall allows himself to be drawn into a very tangled web of rape, perversion, pathological lies, obsession, and mental illness, in which no point of view is reliable, and truth itself seems to exist only as a rather callous metaphor: "Literature was the study of Them by Us. It was undertaken by people smart enough to make a microscope of the page—or, more fashionably, to assert that things could shake out any number of ways because the page was a kaleidoscope." The investigation that Marshall takes on at his student's instigation succeeds in discovering unimagined secrets at just about every remove of his own life, and he takes to the road—comically enough, to Florida during spring break—in an attempt to settle the mysteries of his own childhood. Through all of this, Beattie manages to keep the metaphorical elements here grounded in a narrative at once compelling and disturbing, and she broadens the perspective immensely by juxtaposing the unhappy marriage of Marshall's father—as revealed in old love letters interleaved throughout the text—with the spectacle of Marshall and Sonja trying to make a success of their own married life. Vivid, rich, and utterly real: this time, Beattie has fitted her voice to her subject perfectly, and shaped her subject without flaw.
Pub Date: Sept. 22, 1995
ISBN: 0-679-40078-8
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1995
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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