Jungk’s beautiful, uncanny work breaks new ground in stories about fathers and sons.
A traffic jam prompts a stirring meditation on family, faith and intellect.
Dour Viennese furrier Gustav is en route by car to his house outside New York, where his wife and children are waiting for him. The pressure’s on to arrive before sunset; he’s recently converted to Orthodox Judaism, much to the frustration of his mother Rosa. Much to Gustav’s frustration, Rosa is with him as he drives, lecturing him about everything from his choice of wife to his choice of rental car. Worse, they’ll be stuck together for a while, as a chemical spill on the Tappan Zee Bridge brings traffic to a halt. Jungk (Tigor, 2004, etc.) slows down the narrative at that moment, suggesting a Nicholson Baker-esque study of the minutiae of living with gridlock. But when Gustav steps out of the car to look at the Hudson River, an unusual thing happens: He sees the enormous naked body of his late father, Ludwig, lying across the river’s banks. It’s patently absurd, but Jungk masterfully captures the confusion the image creates in Gustav’s and Rosa’s minds, as well as the vaguely unsettled feeling it arouses in others on the bridge. (They don’t see the “fatherbody” but sense something odd about the river.) Ludwig was a famous scientist—importantly, his major text was titled Fusion—and as Gustav walks across the bridge he ponders the connection between his father’s body and his life. The sight of Ludwig’s penis recalls memories of his infidelities; his stomach evokes his intestinal illnesses; and, finally, his mind evokes his intellectual force. Jungk shows just how tightly knit the relationship was and is between Gustav and his parents, and though the tone is muted throughout, the overall feeling is one of uplift, affirmation of the deep bonds that connect the family. The presence of his father’s body on the river, however strange, doesn’t confuse and complicate Gustav’s life—it clarifies it.
Jungk’s beautiful, uncanny work breaks new ground in stories about fathers and sons.Pub Date: March 10, 2009
ISBN: 978-1-59051-275-3
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Handsel/Other Press
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2008
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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