At once novel, cultural essay, mythology, and collection of linked stories, Italian writer Calasso’s newest is a buoyant, expansive narrative that captures, with earthy vigor, scrupulous scholarship, and epic breadth, the Indian cultural ethos. In crisply written prose, Calasso (The Marriage of Cadmus and Harmony, 1993) seeks depths, and encourages questions, that become a pleasure to ponder. The title sets the tone. “Ka”—a word that refers to any originating source—is really a question, both personal and vast: “Who?” In the 15 sections that comprise the work (along with a helpful glossary of names and terms), Calasso narrates different phases of creation—how did time happen to us? who made death?— each concluded with a fresh narrative mystery. What may have been originally just phrases or illuminating parables are here woven together to form one coherent “story,” rich in insight and drama, that is gently helped along by Calasso’s brief expository passages. The result is a multilayered, engaging composition that entertainingly draws the reader through a sophisticated system of thought. The result, though, isn—t a handbook: Calasso knows that not ideas but characters are what make stories work, and that we understand best when we sympathize most. He’s populated his story with Indian gods who, each with unique passions, anxieties, lusts and errors, are immediately available to any reader. With phrases often culled from original literature (frequently the Rg Veda), such figures as Prajapati (the first Ka), Daksa (the craftsman) with “furrows on each side of a hooked nose, hollow cheeks . . . and a thick, pendulous lower lip), and the Buddha are fully realized individuals, not “human-sized” figurines. While the characters enliven the pages, it’s the thematic persistence of mysteries both cosmic and existential—Ka?—that piques our interest and generates the deeper resonances here. In a book that may as easily be browsed as read at length, Calasso seems to have written with the Buddha’s last words in mind: “Act without inattention.—
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1998
ISBN: 0-679-45131-5
Page Count: 464
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 1998
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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