Like a dozen Paris Hiltons bombed on champagne, but funny.
Yet another tale of New York girls with more room on their credit cards than thoughts between their ears—but not in a bad way.
There may come a time in the future when a scholar of literature will come across a copy of this debut novel and shudder, thinking it one of those post-millennium Manhattan books that worship Vera Wang and Harry Winston as deities, regard Us Weekly as a holy text, and treat reality like a sexuality transmitted disease. That would be a shame, because if books of this sort must exist—and the publishing powers-that-be seem to have decided that they must—they should all go down as smoothly as this one. Vogue contributing editor Sykes has a frightening insight into the mindset of unemployed, label-addicted blonds. When she’s not working (which appears to be 99% of the time), our fashion journalist narrator/author stand-in is being dragged around Manhattan by Julie, her Upper East Side PAP (Park Avenue Princess, one of the story’s less inspired acronyms, of which there are plenty). They shop, they spa, they obsess over food allergies and hair highlights. The narrator hooks up with a photographer whose Jude Law looks are belied by his Freddy Krueger personality; their engagement goes to pot pretty spectacularly, but it’s nothing that a round of Bellinis and a fake bake (tan) can’t cure. There are more romantic contretemps and even a suicide attempt (with Advil: these girls aren’t too bright), but by the close everything gets wrapped up prettier than a Tiffany’s gift box. Be assured, this is all as ungodly shallow as it sounds, but at least Sykes knows how vain and ridiculous her characters are. She makes no attempt to redeem them and in the end really does want the girls just to have fun, which lets the reader come along for a guilt-free ride that’s akin to being let loose on Fifth Avenue with Donald Trump’s platinum card.
Like a dozen Paris Hiltons bombed on champagne, but funny.Pub Date: April 1, 2004
ISBN: 1-4013-5196-4
Page Count: 272
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2004
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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