One of a kind. Deserves a big splash and lots of readers.
An international art star becomes a dog walker after 25 harsh years in federal prison.
This funny, edgy, and winning novel introduces an extraordinary narrator who reveals her back story slowly and tantalizingly, so spoilers must be avoided here. Her name is Carleen Kepper, but it used to be Ester Rosenthal. It was changed by the woman who admitted her into the prison system to serve her life sentence because “They’ll kill you within a day and a half for crucifying their Lord.” For reasons that will be revealed, Carleen has been paroled and is living in a halfway house in New York City. She works as a dog walker and trainer, an occupation at which she is uniquely gifted. She is also trying to gain access to her 11-year-old daughter, a precocious girl who has changed her name from Pony to Batya Shulamite and is preparing for her bat mitzvah. How can she have a child that age if she was in prison since she was 18? Can’t tell you. What can be said is that Ester Rosenthal was an art prodigy who made the cover of the New York Times Magazine at the age of 12 and whose paintings sell for more than $100,000, and it is kleptomania and prankery that got way out of hand that led to her incarceration. Among many great things about this book, each of its many dogs practically leaps off the page. Carleen on black standard poodles: “They demand constant, unequivocal love and will leap into your lap as if they were toy versions of themselves and are insulted when ordered to get off. They learn their commands instantly, but not because they are particularly smart. They’re more like teenage boys who joined the army too soon and will do any discipline just to prove they can do it.” Swados (My Depression: A Picture Book, 2005, etc.), a respected playwright, died at 64 just after finishing this novel.
One of a kind. Deserves a big splash and lots of readers.Pub Date: June 14, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-55861-921-0
Page Count: 392
Publisher: Feminist Press
Review Posted Online: April 12, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2016
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
Dated sermonizing on career versus motherhood, and conflict driven by characters’ willed helplessness, sap this tale of...
Lifelong, conflicted friendship of two women is the premise of Hannah’s maudlin latest (Magic Hour, 2006, etc.), again set in Washington State.
Tallulah “Tully” Hart, father unknown, is the daughter of a hippie, Cloud, who makes only intermittent appearances in her life. Tully takes refuge with the family of her “best friend forever,” Kate Mularkey, who compares herself unfavorably with Tully, in regards to looks and charisma. In college, “TullyandKate” pledge the same sorority and major in communications. Tully has a life goal for them both: They will become network TV anchorwomen. Tully lands an internship at KCPO-TV in Seattle and finagles a producing job for Kate. Kate no longer wishes to follow Tully into broadcasting and is more drawn to fiction writing, but she hesitates to tell her overbearing friend. Meanwhile a love triangle blooms at KCPO: Hard-bitten, irresistibly handsome, former war correspondent Johnny is clearly smitten with Tully. Expecting rejection, Kate keeps her infatuation with Johnny secret. When Tully lands a reporting job with a Today-like show, her career shifts into hyperdrive. Johnny and Kate had started an affair once Tully moved to Manhattan, and when Kate gets pregnant with daughter Marah, they marry. Kate is content as a stay-at-home mom, but frets about being Johnny’s second choice and about her unrealized writing ambitions. Tully becomes Seattle’s answer to Oprah. She hires Johnny, which spells riches for him and Kate. But Kate’s buttons are fully depressed by pitched battles over slutwear and curfews with teenaged Marah, who idolizes her godmother Tully. In an improbable twist, Tully invites Kate and Marah to resolve their differences on her show, only to blindside Kate by accusing her, on live TV, of overprotecting Marah. The BFFs are sundered. Tully’s latest attempt to salvage Cloud fails: The incorrigible, now geriatric hippie absconds once more. Just as Kate develops a spine, she’s given some devastating news. Will the friends reconcile before it’s too late?
Dated sermonizing on career versus motherhood, and conflict driven by characters’ willed helplessness, sap this tale of poignancy.Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2008
ISBN: 978-0-312-36408-3
Page Count: 496
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2007
BOOK TO SCREEN
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