Anonymously written by a Manhattan prep-school teacher, this debut aspires to social satire, but much of the humor is...
A conspiracy to get a rich man’s daughter into Princeton ensnares an idealistic prep-school teacher.
A few weeks before summer is not the easiest time to keep the students of Academy X focused on the book in front of them, which, for John Spencer’s senior lit class, is Emma. Half his time is spent reminding students to refer to the titular character as Jane Austen dubbed her and not as Hollywood cast her (Gwyneth Paltrow). The rest is spent quelling class wars between the wealthy and the ultra-wealthy and more primitive fights between brains and brawn. Par for the course, John thinks, for end-of-school-year antics . . . until his most comely, most scantily clad student, Caitlyn Brie, approaches him for help. She was accepted at Wellesley, but only wait-listed at Princeton. Wellesley won’t do. Pressure to write Caitlyn a second, stronger letter of recommendation rises when the head of the College Counseling Department reminds John that Caitlyn’s father is a big Academy X donor. Two tickets for floor seats at a Knicks playoff game appear anonymously in John’s mailbox, and since he is trying to woo Amy, a new assistant librarian, he yields. Shortly thereafter, everything unhinges: Amy may not be as innocent as John imagines . . . and neither is Caitlyn: She committed plagiarism. Determined to expose the crime, John finds himself charged with sexual harassment and bribery. He enlists a motley group to help him clear his name: a handful of loyal students, an art teacher who won’t admit her boyfriend is gay and a science teacher who thinks evolutionary biology will help him find a date. Can this band take on the trustees’ bank accounts, their lawyers and the shamelessly competitive English faculty, who all covet the post of department head, which rightly belongs to John?
Anonymously written by a Manhattan prep-school teacher, this debut aspires to social satire, but much of the humor is canned. Stick with the original, Lucky Jim.Pub Date: June 13, 2006
ISBN: 1-59691-177-8
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2006
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
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.
Life lessons.
Angie Malone, the youngest of a big, warm Italian-American family, returns to her Pacific Northwest hometown to wrestle with various midlife disappointments: her divorce, Papa’s death, a downturn in business at the family restaurant, and, above all, her childlessness. After several miscarriages, she, a successful ad exec, and husband Conlan, a reporter, befriended a pregnant young girl and planned to adopt her baby—and then the birth mother changed her mind. Angie and Conlan drifted apart and soon found they just didn’t love each other anymore. Metaphorically speaking, “her need for a child had been a high tide, an overwhelming force that drowned them. A year ago, she could have kicked to the surface but not now.” Sadder but wiser, Angie goes to work in the struggling family restaurant, bickering with Mama over updating the menu and replacing the ancient waitress. Soon, Angie befriends another young girl, Lauren Ribido, who’s eager to learn and desperately needs a job. Lauren’s family lives on the wrong side of the tracks, and her mother is a promiscuous alcoholic, but Angie knows nothing of this sad story and welcomes Lauren into the DeSaria family circle. The girl listens in, wide-eyed, as the sisters argue and make wisecracks and—gee-whiz—are actually nice to each other. Nothing at all like her relationship with her sluttish mother, who throws Lauren out when boyfriend David, en route to Stanford, gets her pregnant. Will Lauren, who’s just been accepted to USC, let Angie adopt her baby? Well, a bit of a twist at the end keeps things from becoming too predictable.
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.Pub Date: July 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-345-46750-7
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2004
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