A conventional up-by-one’s-bootstraps tale redeemed by the complex musician at its center.
A woman in drag navigates the man’s world of tango music a century ago.
Leda, the heroine of De Robertis’ third novel (The Invisible Mountain, 2009; Perla, 2012), arrives in Buenos Aires from her native Italy in 1913 expecting to start a new life with her husband, a cousin she married by proxy in Naples. But she gets bad news practically from the moment she steps off the gangplank: Dante was killed at a protest rally, leaving her struggling to get by in an overcrowded conventillo where single women are expected to sew for a living and avoid the streets at night. But carrying her father’s violin and dressed in Dante’s clothes, she infiltrates the city’s rowdy tango clubs, typically attached to brothels. When a violinist is stabbed onstage, Leda sees an opening to enter this exclusively male world of musicians; taking her late husband’s name, she eventually plays a central role in a group that becomes a sensation over the next five years. Plotwise, the core story contains few surprises: the novel tracks Leda/Dante’s rise in this musical demimonde, with familiar star-is-born detail and somewhat purple reveries about the music’s uplift. But the character's gender switch (loosely inspired by the life of jazz pianist Billy Tipton, who passed as a man for decades) is a critical part of this novel, giving depth and a much-needed sense of surprise to the story. Relationships with various women, from prostitutes to the owner of the club where he performs, complicate Leda's shifting gender identity and thoughtfully raise questions of male power and the moral issues of Leda/Dante’s claiming and wielding it. The novel is a plea to embrace “the bright jagged thing you really are,” and in its hero’s more contemplative, interior moments, De Robertis captures the enormity of that struggle.
A conventional up-by-one’s-bootstraps tale redeemed by the complex musician at its center.Pub Date: July 7, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-101-87449-3
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: April 13, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 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
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The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with...
Talk-show queen takes tumble as millions jeer.
Nora Bridges is a wildly popular radio spokesperson for family-first virtues, but her loyal listeners don't know that she walked out on her husband and teenaged daughters years ago and didn't look back. Now that a former lover has sold racy pix of naked Nora and horny himself to a national tabloid, her estranged daughter Ruby, an unsuccessful stand-up comic in Los Angeles, has been approached to pen a tell-all. Greedy for the fat fee she's been promised, Ruby agrees and heads for the San Juan Islands, eager to get reacquainted with the mom she plans to betray. Once in the family homestead, nasty Ruby alternately sulks and glares at her mother, who is temporarily wheelchair-bound as a result of a post-scandal car crash. Uncaring, Ruby begins writing her side of the story when she's not strolling on the beach with former sweetheart Dean Sloan, the son of wealthy socialites who basically ignored him and his gay brother Eric. Eric, now dying of cancer and also in a wheelchair, has returned to the island. This dismal threesome catch up on old times, recalling their childhood idylls on the island. After Ruby's perfect big sister Caroline shows up, there's another round of heartfelt talk. Nora gradually reveals the truth about her unloving husband and her late father's alcoholism, which led her to seek the approval of others at the cost of her own peace of mind. And so on. Ruby is aghast to discover that she doesn't know everything after all, but Dean offers her subdued comfort. Happy endings await almost everyone—except for readers of this nobly preachy snifflefest.
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with syrupy platitudes about life and love.Pub Date: March 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-609-60737-5
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2001
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