An exhilarating and emotionally astute mystery.
When a popular high school teacher suddenly vanishes, a pack of his most devoted former students starts looking for him in this debut novel.
Bob Fiske is a legendary high school English teacher and football coach at Evanston Township High in Michigan who’s known for his undying dedication to his students. He regularly compiles an unofficial list of “Winners,” a roster meant both to recognize students for their talents and inspire underachievers to fulfill their unrealized promise. Then Fiske mysteriously disappears, raising suspicions of foul play. Some admiring past Winners are so distraught they organize their own search party, prepared to put their lives on hold until they track him down, their loyalty to Fiske affectingly depicted by Bond. The group doesn’t have much time. Principal Mancini and Fiske have long been bitter rivals—the teacher is infamous for his confrontational demeanor. Mancini gives the band 24 hours to find Fiske before he’s terminated from his job for dereliction of duty. The team of faithful former students is led by Stephanie “Steph” Reece, who was one of Fiske’s brightest pupils. She is haunted by guilt that she squandered his support by falling short of her extraordinary potential. She’s especially attached to Fiske since he became something of a substitute for her own father, who died of cancer when she was only 3 years old. There’s a break in the case when another past Winner—Eric Pinkersby, an astonishingly successful tech entrepreneur—discovers that Fiske has been exchanging texts regularly with Autumn Brockert, a 16-year-old student of his. And when she too goes missing, the police suspect he abducted her, though Steph simply can’t accept that her idol is a craven predator. Bond collapses two distinct literary genres into one seamless novelistic whole: a mystery and an emotional drama. While the past Winners hunt down clues in order to find Fiske, they’re forced to confront the memories of their high school selves and the extent to which their adult lives are either a consummation or betrayal of their youthful talents. And Fiske is deliciously enigmatic—though almost heroically supportive of his students, he seems to harbor a dark past, filled with rueful remorse. The author subtly captures Fiske’s complexity as well as his penchant for profoundly stirring inspiration: “Stephanie, time is our mortal enemy. Time leeches ambition. Never forget that greatness lives inside you. No matter how far off course you stray—no matter what you’ve done or have to atone for in the past—greatness remains. Greatness is never beyond salvage.” But the plot becomes increasingly convoluted and implausible and exchanges the dramatic nuance that typified the beginning for operatic melodrama. Yet Bond is so ingeniously inventive—he consistently moves the story in wholly unpredictable directions—that it’s likely readers will forgive these real but minor fictional vices. The novel’s central mystery is thrilling, but the true spine of the tale is the fragile connections between the past Winners, who must not only investigate Fiske’s disappearance, but also the authenticity of their lives and friendships.
An exhilarating and emotionally astute mystery.Pub Date: Dec. 1, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-73225-520-3
Page Count: 330
Publisher: Time Tunnel Media
Review Posted Online: Aug. 14, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
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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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