A convincing fictional exploration of human optimism and weakness.
Two Mexican American workers pursue dreams of independence in this reimagining of John Steinbeck’s classic 1937 novella Of Mice and Men.
On a warm spring day, two men arrive at a lemon ranch in Saticoy, California. Juanito Sanchez is much gentler than his huge stature might indicate. After the death of his aunt, who raised him, he’s traveling to Los Angeles, where his uncle runs a small grocery store. Because he’s intellectually disabled, his aunt entrusted his inheritance money to his friend and travel companion, Tomás Delgado. Tomás is sharp-witted and perceptive, but he’s unable to resist a gamble. He insists to Juanito that their lives will be better soon, as Juanito’s uncle has promised them both employment and shelter. Juanito yearns for solitude and stability, and Tomás looks forward to the freedoms that such a job would give him. To that end, he reassures Juanito that they’ll head to LA as soon as they earn enough wages as migrant fruit pickers. However, during their first week in the lemon groves, Tomás takes an interest in Celedonia, the lovely wife of the boss’s son, which creates tensions that lead to tragedy. Gomez (Our Noise, 1995, etc.) excels at creating a sense of impending catastrophe as Tomás and Juanito’s situation worsens. Tomás is a complicated and engaging character who resents the limitations imposed on him by white society and who’s haunted by his wartime naval experience. The narrative parallels to Of Mice and Men are handled well, as the author uses many motifs from the original work to very different ends. The story exposes the plight of Mexican American workers of the era through conversations that address the abysmal conditions on migrant farms and the injustices of a mass deportation effort. In this way, Gomez gives a classic tale new life and sheds light on an underacknowledged chapter of American history.
A convincing fictional exploration of human optimism and weakness.Pub Date: Nov. 12, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-73311-280-2
Page Count: 154
Publisher: Harrow Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 22, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
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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