A crass use of a still-active murder case.
Foreign students in Italy: One winds up dead in this awkward riff on the notorious Amanda Knox/Meredith Kercher case.
Tabitha "Taz" Deacon is Irish, an exchange student from an English university. From the outset, Crouch (Men and Dogs, 2010, etc.) designates narrator Taz as the victim; she will eventually, in a nod to Sebold’s The Lovely Bones, address the reader from beyond the grave. Taz is just one more in a centuries-old line of Umbria’s sacrificial victims, whose profiles pop up throughout the novel. In Grifonia, the stand-in for Perugia, Taz takes a particular interest in Etruscan mythology. This is commendably high-minded, but Grifonia is swarming with students itching to get laid, and Taz is lonely, with limited sexual experience. Luckily, she runs into a trio of girls who make her the fourth member of their Brit Four Society. Their leader is Jenny, and her advice is succinct: You’re only young once, so don’t take just one lover—take 10. The girls have access to all the best parties because, it emerges, they’re a drug ring: procuring, storing and selling the stuff. The failure to convince us of this is the hole at the heart of the novel. Taz must also reckon with her American roomie, Claire, who's loyal, loudmouthed, needy and too beautiful for her own good. Not surprisingly, she scores even more often than Jenny, while Taz makes out with their Italian neighbor; rough trade but satisfying. Hookups and breakups: The novel’s movement is circular, with too many characters riding the sex and drug carousel, and lacks suspense. Taz’s murder only happens because she’s pressured to connive in the drug business; the heat is on, and she hides the product in an Etruscan burial chamber, a 21st century addition to its layers of history.
A crass use of a still-active murder case.Pub Date: June 17, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-374-10036-0
Page Count: 232
Publisher: Sarah Crichton/Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: April 16, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2014
PROFILES
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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