Darkly comic journey touching on love, art and the nature of obsession.
Young novelist stalled after the early success of her first book becomes increasingly fixated on a famous filmmaker she has admired since childhood.
For 33-year-old Rebekah Kettle, few things are as comforting as the annual release of an Arthur Weeman movie. A prolific New York writer/director/actor (yes, think Woody Allen), Weeman has always been there for her, dating back to her parents’ divorce. So devoted is Rebekah that she spends $22,000 of her doctor father’s money at an Arthur Weeman prop sale, taking home such useful items as a gondola and an oxygen tank. Feeling slightly guilty about using her preoccupied dad’s money, which he has not yet discovered missing, she decides to pitch in at his medical practice after his assistant/mistress Irmabelle leaves. It is there she meets Mrs. Williams, a wheelchair-bound elderly woman suffering from what appears to be dementia. She also, it turns out, lives in the building facing Weeman’s, with a view into his kitchen. Soon Rebekah is wheeling Mrs. Williams about, buying her diapers—and watching Weeman. Things get weirder when she starts writing to him in the guise of a pubescent girl named Thalia. Her unanswered letters are wildly imaginative wonders of provocation and innocence, and she notices Weeman starting to squire around an actual underage schoolgirl. For Rebekah, Weeman’s inappropriate “relationship” is less troubling than the fact that her letters appear to have affected him. She soon realizes that she has found a subject for her second novel. Around this time, she meets her romantic match in Isaac Myman, an oddball tabloid photographer. As she and Isaac get closer, she feels torn: Exposing Weeman’s secret could win Isaac a career boost. In eccentric Rebekah, Belle (High Maintenance, 2001, etc.) has created another unforgettable narrator—funny, self-absorbed, a little damaged—and never predictable.
Darkly comic journey touching on love, art and the nature of obsession.Pub Date: May 17, 2007
ISBN: 1-59448-946-7
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Riverhead
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2007
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
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.
Sisters work together to solve a child-abandonment case.
Ellie and Julia Cates have never been close. Julia is shy and brainy; Ellie gets by on charm and looks. Their differences must be tossed aside when a traumatized young girl wanders in from the forest into their hometown in Washington. The sisters’ professional skills are put to the test. Julia is a world-renowned child psychologist who has lost her edge. She is reeling from a case that went publicly sour. Though she was cleared of all wrongdoing, Julia’s name was tarnished, forcing her to shutter her Beverly Hills practice. Ellie Barton is the local police chief in Rain Valley, who’s never faced a tougher case. This is her chance to prove she is more than just a fading homecoming queen, but a scarcity of clues and a reluctant victim make locating the girl’s parents nearly impossible. Ellie places an SOS call to her sister; she needs an expert to rehabilitate this wild-child who has been living outside of civilization for years. Confronted with her professional demons, Julia once again has the opportunity to display her talents and salvage her reputation. Hannah (The Things We Do for Love, 2004, etc.) is at her best when writing from the girl’s perspective. The feral wolf-child keeps the reader interested long after the other, transparent characters have grown tiresome. Hannah’s torturously over-written romance passages are stale, but there are surprises in store as the sisters set about unearthing Alice’s past and creating a home for her.
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.Pub Date: March 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-345-46752-3
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2005
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