Elaborate fiction that has a certain perverse fascination—though one wonders subversively whether it needs doing at all.
French author Volodine aims at the head rather than the heart in this postmodern novel featuring one of his main alter egos, Lutz Bassmann, supposedly the author of his most renowned book, Minor Angels.
From the title alone we know we’re not in a Jamesian tradition of realistic fiction. Volodine is far more interested in crafting an aesthetic than a novel with plot and character conflict. The opening conceit here is that sometime in the future, the incarcerated Bassmann is facing death for unknown reasons (though primarily because he’s seen as a revolutionary), yet he remains to the end a spokesman for the “post-exotic principle according to which a portion of shadow always subsists in the moment of explanation or confession, modifying the confession to the point of rendering it unusable to the enemy.” This 11th “lesson” of post-exoticism—the main narrative thread—is interrupted by 10 other lessons made up of lists and aesthetic manifestos of various pseudo-authors/alter egos such as Maria Clementi, Elli Kronauer, and Bassmann. These names are all masks for Volodine himself, whose authorial voice remains enigmatic in the extreme. The manifestos primarily define and examine a world of post-exotic forms, the most important of which are romånces, Shaggås, and interjoists. A random sampling of Volodine’s (and Bassmann’s) preoccupations would include the following: “A Shaggå always breaks down into two distinct textual masses: one part, a series of seven sequences rigorously identical in length and tone; the other, a commentary, in which the style and dimensions are free.” To be sure we get the point, the tenth (and final) “lesson” of the novel consists of a list of 343 works identified by title, author, form, and date, a whimsical and tortuous exhibition of post-exoticism itself.
Elaborate fiction that has a certain perverse fascination—though one wonders subversively whether it needs doing at all.Pub Date: May 12, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-940953-11-3
Page Count: 100
Publisher: Open Letter
Review Posted Online: March 30, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2015
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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