Outrageously funny for the first few chapters, but wears very thin and becomes quite tedious in short order: Kononov’s humor...
Over-the-top first novel from Russia that butchers an entire stockyard full of sacred communist cows in its account of the military and erotic exploits of a 15-year-old girl during the Siege of Leningrad.
Fifteen years ago a publication like this would have been printed on bootleg mimeographs and probably have earned its author a nice long stay in some Siberian gulag. Today, however, it seems more like an exercise in cheap laughs. There isn’t much of a story—at least not much of a coherent one. Our heroine is the dauntless Maria “Midge” Mukhina, a teenaged Young Pioneer (the Soviet equivalent of the Hitler Youth) who longs so desperately to serve in the Great Patriotic War (WWII) that she forges the necessary papers and enlists as a machine-gunner in the Red Army. Midge is the embodiment of all the socialist virtues extolled in the propaganda pieces of the time: daring, selfless, obedient, and absolutely confident in the leadership of Comrade Stalin. So zealous is she for the defense and triumph of the People’s Revolution that she’s honored by the great Marshall Zhukov, the Defender of Moscow, with a secret mission that will make her a Hero of the Soviet Union—posthumously, of course. How has Midge earned such a commission? On her back, mostly, attending to the needs of all the men in her regiment (officers getting priority, naturally) night after night for the last several years. But now Midge’s nighttime duties take on a new form, since she has found a way to leave her body and fly, stark-naked, through the skies over Leningrad each night. Naturally, this strikes fear into the hearts of the Germans, whose panzers are no match for the airborne nude nymph of the Red Army.
Outrageously funny for the first few chapters, but wears very thin and becomes quite tedious in short order: Kononov’s humor depends on familiarity with the pomposities of Soviet mythology that will be lost on most Americans.Pub Date: June 1, 2004
ISBN: 1-85242-835-X
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Serpent’s Tail
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 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
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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