A fevered, strenuous fictional life of Swiss pioneering feminist Emily Kempin-Spyri—the first woman to earn a Doctorate of Law in Europe—that smolders with feminist mission. In 1888, Emily traveled to New York and led an effort to establish a school of law for women. She died in 1901 in a Basel asylum. Emily was the daughter of a stern pastor, one who was broad- minded only ``when it came to materialism,'' and who was inflexible in enforcing the double standard. The only female family member exhibiting any degree of independence was aunt-by-marriage Johanna, author of Heidi (Hasler offers a formidable portrait), but even Johanna declared that the sole object of female learning was to help one's children. It will be Emily's gentle failure of a husband (pastor, social reformer, would-be journalist) who teaches her Latin and university prerequisites. At 34, then, Emily receives her degree in 1887 from the university at Zurich (the rare institution that allowed women to attend classes). Meanwhile, America beckons, and she finds a thrilling momentum among the wealthy feminists of New York. But despite stunning successes—lectures, fetes, and the triumph of founding a school of law for women—there are also the domestic demands of husband and three children. The marriage frays, Walter returns to Zurich, and soon Emily follows—to find poverty, humiliations, and doors closing rather than opening to her. Finally, she's victim to the unbearable tension that's caused by the desperate struggle to stay afloat in waves of social condemnation, rejection, and inner guilts, shame, and anger. She dies in an asylum (which, in fact, the author finds, has no record of her residence). Hasler has conjured up dream visitations of chimeric hopes and mangled memories in a cold and repressive institution. A highly colored tribute, which flickers back and forth in time, to a gifted woman who lived beyond her strength.
Pub Date: Jan. 17, 1994
ISBN: 0-88064-151-7
Page Count: 214
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 1993
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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