Usable as an introduction to a canon in the making, but inconsequential, even for an anthology.
A usual-suspects gathering of living American short-story writers, with a few nods to the up-and-coming generation.
A short story is to a novel as an hour is to a year: a vignette, a slice of life, a situation. When the late Raymond Carver wrote one, it ended inconclusively and unhappily; if David Foster Wallace writes one, it has footnotes; if any one of a thousand young Brooklyn residents or MFA grads writes one, it is usually “edgy,” with lots of product placement. Happily, Oates (My Sister, My Love, 2008, etc.) and debut acolyte Beha open with one of the most classically minded of contemporary short fictionists, namely the Spokane Indian writer Sherman Alexie, who, like the Kiowa writer N. Scott Momaday (alive, but not included), can jab neatly at white audiences while beating most of their authors at their own game; in this instance, Alexie’s oft-anthologized “The Toughest Indian in the World” does the sparring. Junot Díaz and Edwidge Danticat represent the two halves of Hispaniola, with Díaz similarly turning multiculturalism on its head by making mock-heroes of tenement losers (“Tonight me and Aurora sit in front of the TV and split a case of Budweiser. This is going to hurt, she says, holding her can up.”) Stuart Dybek delivers a neat turn on baseball (“Most guys are washed up by seventeen”); Annie Proulx does the customary duty of conjuring a downer on the High Plains; and Jhumpa Lahiri turns in a curiously flat piece of suburban angst. But the rest of the collection contains nary a surprise, with the well known (Ford, McGuane, Gaitskill, Chabon) doing what they do so well—and have done in many other collections, which this one does nothing to supplant or best.
Usable as an introduction to a canon in the making, but inconsequential, even for an anthology.Pub Date: Oct. 14, 2008
ISBN: 978-0-06-166158-7
Page Count: 768
Publisher: Perennial/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2008
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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