A thoughtfully executed tale that perceptively dramatizes the tension between the demands of love and commerce.
In this romance set in the early 19th century, a young woman finds herself pursued by an uncouth and relentless duke who’ll stop at nothing to possess her.
Once her grandfather dies, Phyllida Satterthwaite is left alone in the world as well as virtually penniless—both of her parents died shortly after she was born. She’s taken into the care of her uncle, Edgar Townsend, who lets her modest estate in the country and brings her to London to pair her with a husband. Unfortunately, the duke of Moreland takes an avid interest in her, a man so notorious for his maniacal pursuit of objects of beauty he’s nicknamed “the Collector.” Phyllida, now his quarry, becomes known as the “Work of Art.” The duke is an unreservedly unsavory human being—he beats dogs and is suspected of murdering his wife. Phyllida refuses his hand in marriage, but the duke makes it clear he never asked for it in the first place. Edgar likewise views their union as a financial transaction, one for which the duke paid handsomely. She turns to Capt. Arthur Heywood, a friendly acquaintance, for help, and he chivalrously offers to wed her, a “marriage in name only” that rescues her from the duke’s salacious attention. But the duke is not so easily defeated, and the new pair is threatened by the prospect of his “swift and brutal retaliation.” The duke remains a hyperbolically unsubtle caricature in an otherwise intelligently nuanced novel by Matthews (A Modest Independence, 2019). The author seamlessly combines a suspenseful tale and a soaring romance, the plot by turns sweetly moving and dramatically stirring. The relationship between Phyllida and Arthur is especially well crafted—what was initially a partnership borne out of practicality and mutual respect slowly shows promise of blossoming into something more transcendent. Occasionally, Matthews can be a bit heavy-handed with her narrative commentary; for example, she feels the need, after repeatedly making the point that the duke sees Phyllida as a trophy rather than a person, to tell readers that she really isn’t: “But she was no painting. She was a human being.” Nevertheless, the story as a whole is filled with tenderness and intrigue and is sure to delight lovers of the genre.
A thoughtfully executed tale that perceptively dramatizes the tension between the demands of love and commerce.Pub Date: July 23, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-73305-691-5
Page Count: 390
Publisher: Perfectly Proper Press
Review Posted Online: July 10, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
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
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