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CASTLE OF SHADOWS

A FAMILY SAGA

A family saga that boasts ambitious, sophisticated, and controlled storytelling.

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The lives of an Italian Piedmontese family are traced across generations in this novel.

In the opening to this intricate family history, the first-person narrator, Antigone, confides that “cameras have always played an important role in the lives of the Ducati family.” The book centers on a family archive, with the narrator describing various photographs and documents, then “filling in the narrative spaces with action and dialogue.” The first photo to be examined is a group portrait taken in 1908 outside the family seat, the castle of Cortalba in Piedmont. The picture depicts the narrator’s great-grandparents Pietro and Olga Ducati along with their daughter Ada, the narrator’s grandmother, and Giulia and Luca, two of their other children. The narrative springs from these characters. It is revealed how Pietro and his brother Leo traveled south to Rome for work and established a biscotti business, after which Pietro married Olga, the daughter of a Genoese ship owner, and bought the castle at auction. The work recounts the stories of numerous other family members, such as Andre, Leo’s son, who moves to Hollywood and establishes himself as a movie director, and Alma, daughter of Ada, who marries Dardo, an actor and direct relative of the pirate Sir Edward Walton. Luca, meanwhile, frequents a brothel and becomes infatuated with a savvy prostitute named Catarì. Divided into three parts spanning the late 19th and 20th centuries, the novel charts how the family copes with rapid change across Europe, such as the rise of Fascism. Featuring a cast of 15 principal characters and over 80 others, including a domesticated leopard, this tale has considerable scope that could easily have proved sprawling. Some concentration is required, particularly since a number of the players have similar names; Alma is also known as Mina, for example, and her daughter is called Nina. Yet the way in which the author refers to photos is a clever way of isolating particular stories and characters to limit potential confusion: “In all the photographs Luca is wearing the same stunned expression in his cerulean, lifeless eyes, and a faint smile seeking his audience’s approval: ‘I’m handsome, aren’t I?’ ” These passages, which exemplify Lawton’s (Amy’s Story, 2017, etc.) keen and elegant descriptive skills, also tantalizingly hint at aspects of each character’s personality, which becomes more evident as the story unfolds. The result is a patchwork of lives that have been painstakingly sewn together. There is also a deep sense of Italian regionality to the tale. The players sip Moscato di Canelli and eat Biscotti Torinesi, both Piedmontese products. Translated from the Italian by Shugaar (The Athenian Woman, 2018, etc.), the narrative occasionally sounds unnatural or ungrammatical to the native English ear. This awkward passage is an example: “It’s not as if there weren’t fraternization among them. There was.” Similarly, candies are described as being “all wrapped individually, with legends written in different colors according to the flavor.” The use of legends is not incorrect, but labels would prove a more natural word choice. Still, this marginally off-key translation detracts little from an elaborate and far-reaching tale that makes for compelling reading.

A family saga that boasts ambitious, sophisticated, and controlled storytelling.

Pub Date: Oct. 8, 2019

ISBN: 978-1-73304-082-2

Page Count: 376

Publisher: New Academia Publishing/ The Spring

Review Posted Online: Nov. 7, 2019

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2019

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A LITTLE LIFE

The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.

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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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JURASSIC PARK

Genetically engineered dinosaurs run amok in Crichton's new, vastly entertaining science thriller. From the introduction alone—a classically Crichton-clear discussion of the implications of biotechnological research—it's evident that the Harvard M.D. has bounced back from the science-fantasy silliness of Sphere (1987) for another taut reworking of the Frankenstein theme, as in The Andromeda Strain and The Terminal Man. Here, Dr. Frankenstein is aging billionaire John Hammond, whose monster is a manmade ecosystem based on a Costa Rican island. Designed as the world's ultimate theme park, the ecosystem boasts climate and flora of the Jurassic Age and—most spectacularly—15 varieties of dinosaurs, created by elaborate genetic engineering that Crichton explains in fascinating detail, rich with dino-lore and complete with graphics. Into the park, for a safety check before its opening, comes the novel's band of characters—who, though well drawn, double as symbolic types in this unsubtle morality play. Among them are hero Alan Grant, noble paleontologist; Hammond, venal and obsessed; amoral dino-designer Henry Wu; Hammond's two innocent grandchildren; and mathematician Ian Malcolm, who in long diatribes serves as Crichton's mouthpiece to lament the folly of science. Upon arrival, the visitors tour the park; meanwhile, an industrial spy steals some dino embryos by shutting down the island's power—and its security grid, allowing the beasts to run loose. The bulk of the remaining narrative consists of dinos—ferocious T. Rex's, voracious velociraptors, venom-spitting dilophosaurs—stalking, ripping, and eating the cast in fast, furious, and suspenseful set-pieces as the ecosystem spins apart. And can Grant prevent the dinos from escaping to the mainland to create unchecked havoc? Though intrusive, the moralizing rarely slows this tornado-paced tale, a slick package of info-thrills that's Crichton's most clever since Congo (1980)—and easily the most exciting dinosaur novel ever written. A sure-fire best-seller.

Pub Date: Nov. 7, 1990

ISBN: 0394588169

Page Count: 424

Publisher: Knopf

Review Posted Online: Sept. 21, 2011

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1990

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