What happens when two self-described sex fiends tie the knot? That's the subject of this broadly comic ninth novel from Nichols (The Milagro Beanfield War, 1984, etc.) Birds do it, bees do it, and newlyweds Roger and Zelda do it whenever the mood takes them, up against the refrigerator or out among the garbage cans. Though both are middle-aged, previously married and parents of teenagers, they have the sexual energy of, well, teenagers. But while everything worked fine during their courtship (``a lighthearted commuter affair'')—when both had other partners by mutual consent—marriage is another story. The problem is Zelda's jealousy, which begins on their wedding night (``Is it better with me than it was with Christie?'') and never lets up. Phone calls from Roger's ex-wife Bonnie and letters from his ex- girlfriends send Zelda into wild temper-tantrums; even his daughter Kim becomes a target (``watching you two together is almost like observing incest in action''). Roger reacts wimpishly, offering feeble resistance, trying to meet his deadlines (he's writing a profitable series of intergalactic detective stories) and knowing that Zelda's frenzied outbursts will be followed by even more frenzied lovemaking. Yet both the sex and the anger are mechanical: instead of the dynamics of a credible marriage, Nichols gives us two people on a sitcom treadmill, in a framework of strained bonhomie (``Get this, folks'') and hyperbolic imagery (``Zelda could shut down her ebullience...as emphatically as Fat Man had shut down Hiroshima''). He wraps up their first six months with a knock-down-drag-out fight, a reconciliation, and a too-cute peek into the future. Nichols is evidently in a slump; for all the effort, this is as unerotic as his last novel (An Elegy for September, 1992).
Pub Date: Feb. 1, 1994
ISBN: 0-8050-2803-X
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 1993
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
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
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