The premise is that women should know more joy in their lives, but this hollow novel is a joyless chore.
Seattle divorcée hopes surf lessons will be a solution to her midlife crisis.
When they divorced, Jackie Laurens’s husband got the vacation house in Palm Springs and a hot young girlfriend. Jackie got the kids and a mega-dose of bitterness. She works as an interior designer, a job that requires her to coddle affluent clients during their outrageous shopping sprees. In her free time, Jackie and her friends gripe about their empty lives and the endless familial obligations that take up so much time. It’s a stretch to feel pity for this privileged crew of heavily caffeinated and flawlessly highlighted ladies. As she nears her 40th birthday, Jackie surmises that her existence is shallow and that she is owned by her possessions. The solution to her malaise is decidedly uninspired—on a quest to simplify her life and find true happiness she books a luxurious getaway to Hawaii. Her search leads her to Kai, a surf instructor. This surfer boy leads a life free from guilt and expectations. Kai provides Jackie with a little spiritual guidance and a lot of steamy sex. Jackie is drawn to his live-for-today philosophy. It doesn’t hurt that this feel-good guru happens to be smoking-hot and ten years younger. The two lovers carry on a long-distance romance that shocks Jackie’s friends and her ex-husband. Despite their disapproval, Jackie continues to see Kai—he makes her feel sexy, young and full of potential, but the impracticalities of the relationship eventually wear Jackie down. She talks a big game about embracing life, but she’s pitiful when it comes to putting her words into action. In the hands of Porter (The Frog Prince, not reviewed), the plight of the middle-aged woman is bleak. The book reads like a rough draft of a memoir, lacking polish and nuance. The ruminations of the heroine are monotonous and the ending is as subtle as a Lifetime made-for-TV movie.
The premise is that women should know more joy in their lives, but this hollow novel is a joyless chore.Pub Date: July 13, 2006
ISBN: 0-446-69726-5
Page Count: 368
Publisher: 5 Spot/Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2006
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
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The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with...
Talk-show queen takes tumble as millions jeer.
Nora Bridges is a wildly popular radio spokesperson for family-first virtues, but her loyal listeners don't know that she walked out on her husband and teenaged daughters years ago and didn't look back. Now that a former lover has sold racy pix of naked Nora and horny himself to a national tabloid, her estranged daughter Ruby, an unsuccessful stand-up comic in Los Angeles, has been approached to pen a tell-all. Greedy for the fat fee she's been promised, Ruby agrees and heads for the San Juan Islands, eager to get reacquainted with the mom she plans to betray. Once in the family homestead, nasty Ruby alternately sulks and glares at her mother, who is temporarily wheelchair-bound as a result of a post-scandal car crash. Uncaring, Ruby begins writing her side of the story when she's not strolling on the beach with former sweetheart Dean Sloan, the son of wealthy socialites who basically ignored him and his gay brother Eric. Eric, now dying of cancer and also in a wheelchair, has returned to the island. This dismal threesome catch up on old times, recalling their childhood idylls on the island. After Ruby's perfect big sister Caroline shows up, there's another round of heartfelt talk. Nora gradually reveals the truth about her unloving husband and her late father's alcoholism, which led her to seek the approval of others at the cost of her own peace of mind. And so on. Ruby is aghast to discover that she doesn't know everything after all, but Dean offers her subdued comfort. Happy endings await almost everyone—except for readers of this nobly preachy snifflefest.
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with syrupy platitudes about life and love.Pub Date: March 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-609-60737-5
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2001
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