All that is good and all that troubles African-American life weaves through the late bestselling author Harris' (In My Father's House, 2010, etc.) final novel, composed in collaboration with Johnson (The Million Dollar Demise, 2009, etc.).
Cobi Winslow is a hard-charging state's attorney in Chicago, the adopted son of a wealthy manufacturer of African-American hair-care products. But Cobi's life changes dramatically after his parents are killed in a plane crash. He is left guilty and confused, having learned only days before the accident that he has a twin brother, a child not adopted because his father only wanted one son. Cobi's relationship with his father had been troubled since his father discovered Cobi in a homosexual tryst with a high-school classmate. Now in love with a local politician, Cobi remains closeted. Cobi soon learns his father's will has a condition. He will inherit millions in stock and trust-fund money only if Cobi marries before he turns 34. The stock in limbo is essential to maintain family control, as Cobi's sister, Sissy, a business whiz and interim CEO, discovers. Sissy hatches a plan to arrange a marriage for Cobi, but Cobi is focused on finding his twin and, deus ex machina, Cobi stumbles on his brother, Eric, while doing legal work at a prison where Eric is finishing a sentence. Much to Sissy's dismay, Cobi invites Eric to live with him, but that doesn't stop Sissy from adding a marriage candidate to the household, Austen Greer, a realtor in financial straits. The narrative moves quickly, but the characters and setting seem stereotypical. The Winslows move in a prosperous, influential and educated African-American social milieu. There's much mention of skin tone, brand names and trendy restaurants. Conversely, Eric, and his prison friend, Blac, the catalyst for the story's conclusion, are poorly educated, involved with drugs or products of a failed system. Chapters are short, many presented in the first-person from Cobi's point of view, and there's a conclusion with a surprising twist, albeit one that leaves a plot point adrift. Sure to appeal to Harris fans.
Pub Date: June 7, 2011
ISBN: 978-1-4391-7809-6
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2011
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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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