Certainly not everyone’s cup of tea, but an unfamiliar treat for those who like their comedy laced with a touch of satire.
A fitfully funny and adventurous experiment from the author of Wicked (1995).
This strangely compelling religious farce originated much differently than the fantasy novels that characterize the work of Boston-based novelist Maguire (A Lion Among Men, 2008, etc.). This peculiar novel was originally born as a limited-edition paperback offered by Concord Free Press, the publisher that gives books away for free. Now Harper has given a second lease on life to this familial dramedy about a rebellious daughter, her devoutly religious mother and the bump on the head that turns their small town into a bit of a circus. Maguire’s main prism on small-town life in Thebes, N.Y., is Tabitha Scales, a teenaged girl with a reputation as the town slut. In fact, she appears so regularly in the town jail that the police have let her decorate her own cell. “Thebes was so lame it might as well be amputated,” she muses. Her mother is the long-suffering Leontina Scales, “a middle-aged pillar of the Radical Radiant Pentecostals (Also Republican, with some standards).” But things take a turn when a statue of Our Lady with a Chip on Her Shoulder falls over, bashing Leontina upside the skull and causing her to erupt in foul-mouthed tongues, espousing things like “Am of God, who takes away the sins of the world. So you: shut up.” It seems that everyone in town is concerned with God’s plans. Meanwhile, young, gay choir director Jeremy Carr is dealing with his own struggles, which include mourning a broken love affair with Willem Handelaers. Meanwhile, the Radical Radiants threaten war with the local Catholic Church.
Certainly not everyone’s cup of tea, but an unfamiliar treat for those who like their comedy laced with a touch of satire.Pub Date: Oct. 5, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-06-199779-2
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Aug. 30, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2010
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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