The acclaimed Danish author's first novelwhich follows into English translation his third, Smilla's Sense of Snow (1993), and second, Borderliners (1994)ingeniously reinvents the traditional family chronicle. Hoeg's ambitious narrative spans three and a half centuries, beginning with the tale of a megalomaniac nobleman (the Count) whose ``dream'' is to halt the passage of time and create a stasis in which his own preeminence remains forever unchallengedand, not incidentally, of scientifically demonstrating that the center of the Earth is located on his property. The Count's folly initiates a train of schemes and envisionings involving the son of his steward, the steward's wife, the unconventional family into which their son later marries, and their succeeding generations, all of which are characterized by a struggle between two conflicting impulses: the lust to acquire wealth and power and a selfless (literally, socialist) solidarity with the underprivileged. Hoeg fills the novel with colorful and vivid detail, expertly dramatizing a broad range of occupations and activities. His quirkily memorable characters include a charming young actor who fails to meet the standards of the lawless family (``Adonis brought his father and mother much sorrow, through his compassion for mankind''), and a spoiled beauty whose increasing alienation from her businesslike husband brings her into troublesome intimacy with their handsome young son. The dreamy distancing from reality that they all experience is powerfully underlined by magical-realist metaphors: An overcrowded tenement building sinks into the earth; fathers, surrendering authority to their sons, lose physical definition, blur before others' eyes, and eventually disappear. A fascinating further dimension is added by Hoeg's narrator, who addresses both readers and the novel's characters, lamenting his lack of full omniscience, laboring to puzzle out the meaning of the story of whichhe finally informs ushe is a central part. A brilliant and appealing workone that will make readers of Hoeg's varied and inventive novels impatient for his next.
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1995
ISBN: 0-374-17138-6
Page Count: 356
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1995
BOOK REVIEW
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
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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