Despite some well-worn plot expedients and an unduly preachy denouement, a sensitive glimpse into the lives of damaged...
Hilderbrand’s latest Nantucket-based tale details the impact of a tragic accident on three families.
Penelope Alistair and her twin brother, Hobson, are the golden juniors of Nantucket High. Penny, gifted with a beautiful voice, is destined for Broadway or the Met, and Hobby is a star athlete. Both are being courted by elite colleges, to the satisfaction and trepidation of their mother, Zoe, a CIA-trained chef who raised them alone. Driving Hobby, Jake and another friend, Demeter, home from a beach party, Penny goes berserk at the wheel of her boyfriend Jake’s Jeep and speeds off a dead-end road. Penny is killed instantly, and Hobby hovers in a coma for days before awakening to injuries that will dash his athletic ambitions. Jake and Demeter are unscathed, at least physically. Alcoholic, overweight Demeter harbors guilt over something she said to Penny that enraged her. What exactly set Penny off becomes the key mystery of the novel. Jake fears that Demeter told Penny that another girl came on to him. Hobby fears Demeter spread a rumor that his prom date, Claire, is pregnant with his child. Demeter cannot bear to contemplate her indiscretion and instead concentrates on staying drunk, quite a challenge around her socially prominent, sober parents. Her summer job with a lawn crew enables her to pilfer premium liquor from well-heeled Nantucket dwellers who don’t lock their doors. Zoe withdraws from her friends, dedicating herself to Hobby’s recovery. Jake’s father, Jordan, removes him and his mother, Ava, to Ava’s native Perth, Australia. Jordan’s motives are mixed: Ava has longed to return home, and Jake needs a fresh start free of traumatic associations, but Jordan’s main intent is to distance himself from Zoe, his lover since his marriage to Ava foundered over the crib death of Jake’s infant brother.
Despite some well-worn plot expedients and an unduly preachy denouement, a sensitive glimpse into the lives of damaged people groping their way toward healing.Pub Date: June 26, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-31-609983-7
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Reagan Arthur/Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: April 28, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2012
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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