A noted chronicler of Irish history and legend (Pride of Lions, 1996, etc.) here deals with the Easter Rising of 1916, as seen through the fictional adventures of a young man close to the inner circle of those working and fighting for Ireland’s independence from England. When first introduced, teenager Ned Halloran is on his way to the US with his parents to attend the wedding of sister Kathleen to an American—the ship is the Titanic. On his grieving return to Ireland, Ned, a farmer’s son, is sent to St. Enda’s, a school where Irish history, language—and pride—are not only valued but taught with fervor. It’s at St. Enda’s that he meets the “conspiracy of poets,” including Headmaster Padraic Pearse, who will become commander-in-chief during the Rising. Ned becomes acquainted with the many faces and phases of the rebellion against the “looting” and “occupying” English, while a plethora of movements begin to surface: the Sinn Fein (then standing for nonmilitary rebellion); the socialist Connolly’s Citizen Army; and the Volunteer Corps. Ned joins the Fianna, a youth corps founded by the doughty Countess Markievicy (who, like the other real-life people here, makes a substantial appearance). In New York, meantime, sister Kathleen makes some unsettling discoveries: Her husband is a brute, contemptuous of her Irish nationalism, and Father Paul, a young priest, is stirring most unspiritual fires within. Back in the homeland, Ned is battling through an amorous dilemma: Is it to be a prim lady (an Anglophile) or a patriotic prostitute, the sister of a dead friend? The revolution heats up; Ned becomes a courier between the many groups and sectors; there are marches, spying, drills—and finally terrible sacrifice. Llywelyn tells her tale with gusto and a respect for the facts; a good deal of both bizarre and somber history shines through the fictional fustian of its likable characters. (Author tour)
Pub Date: April 13, 1998
ISBN: 0-312-86101-X
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Forge
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 1998
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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