An atmospheric, smoky, sepia-toned whodunit, though more for fans of Camus than Chandler.
“Around us, you’re in danger of catching leprosy”: French Nobel Prize winner Modiano (Villa Triste, 2016, etc.) explores the criminal demimonde in a short but potent novel that’s as elegant as Claude Rains and as sinister as Peter Lorre.
An aspiring writer. A young woman with a mysterious past. An older man with nice clothes. The setup is classic Modiano, reminiscent of earlier works such as In the Café of Lost Youth. Originally published in French in 2012, five years after that predecessor volume, this novel turns on familiar elements. Jean, just beginning his career as a writer, carries a little notebook at all times, with jottings that occasionally intimate literature but more often serve as reminders of people he’s met and dates he has to keep, most notably with Dannie, a waiflike young woman whose every breath carries hints of dark secrets and the memory of a particular “nasty incident” about whose nature Jean can only guess. Is Dannie just light-fingered or with a finger on the trigger? It doesn’t help that the man called Aghamouri, who haunts hotels staffed by whispering Maghrebians and wears a beautiful camel coat, drops hints that give Jean the willies or that a police detective doesn’t bother to hide his professional interest in Dannie and her associates. Why does Dannie have access to a country estate? Why doesn’t Aghamouri ever have dinner with his wife? And, if he’s 30 years old and has a wife, what’s he doing hanging around college, apart from keeping an eye on Dannie, whom the world has nothing left to teach? The questions mount. It’s good that American publishers are catching up to Modiano’s recent works, having mined his output from the 1970s and beyond, but it’s a touch curious that this late-period Modiano seems bound up in old formulas, like a more literary but no more cheerful Simenon.
An atmospheric, smoky, sepia-toned whodunit, though more for fans of Camus than Chandler.Pub Date: Sept. 27, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-544-77982-2
Page Count: 144
Publisher: Mariner/Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Review Posted Online: July 2, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2016
There are unforgettable beauties in this very sexy story.
Passion, friendship, heartbreak, and forgiveness ring true in Lovering's debut, the tale of a young woman's obsession with a man who's "good at being charming."
Long Island native Lucy Albright, starts her freshman year at Baird College in Southern California, intending to study English and journalism and become a travel writer. Stephen DeMarco, an upperclassman, is a political science major who plans to become a lawyer. Soon after they meet, Lucy tells Stephen an intensely personal story about the Unforgivable Thing, a betrayal that turned Lucy against her mother. Stephen pretends to listen to Lucy's painful disclosure, but all his thoughts are about her exposed black bra strap and her nipples pressing against her thin cotton T-shirt. It doesn't take Lucy long to realize Stephen's a "manipulative jerk" and she is "beyond pathetic" in her desire for him, but their lives are now intertwined. Their story takes seven years to unfold, but it's a fast-paced ride through hookups, breakups, and infidelities fueled by alcohol and cocaine and with oodles of sizzling sexual tension. "Lucy was an itch, a song stuck in your head or a movie you need to rewatch or a food you suddenly crave," Stephen says in one of his point-of-view chapters, which alternate with Lucy's. The ending is perfect, as Lucy figures out the dark secret Stephen has kept hidden and learns the difference between lustful addiction and mature love.
There are unforgettable beauties in this very sexy story.Pub Date: June 12, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5011-6964-9
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: March 19, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
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