An auspicious mystery debut.
In this bleak Alaskan noir, an embittered, street-hardened woman is determined to find her estranged mother’s killer.
A letter summons a reluctant Kris Gabriel, 24, now living in Los Angeles, to her native Alaska to reunite with her mother, Evie, an alcoholic whom she left nine years before. There’s no love lost between the two, and when Evie is brutally murdered, her body discovered in a stream, some expect Kris to “be glad to bury her mother, to put her last connection to her life in Alaska behind her.” Instead, she wants only to get justice for a woman who “had been stepped on by everybody who’d come through her life,” including police, lovers, landlords, “and social workers who’d nit-picked her with a million chicken-shit rules.” Heath’s debut novel is gripping from the get-go, populated by a gallery of indelible characters and set against a landscape that’s both breathtakingly beautiful and punishing, as in this unnerving image of Evie’s floating body: “The water washed over her rhythmically, like a pulse.” Heath writes efficient scenes of suspense and jolting violence, but the quieter, more reflective moments are the most memorable: “They sat sipping the tea; looking out the window at the shadows cast by the city’s hard yellow lights and listening to the gusts of wind tap the window with pellets of rain.” Genre conventions will put readers on guard to suspect the motives of all who cross Kris’ path, including Ben Stewart, the outdoorsman who’d befriended Evie and later found her body; Vern, the last man with whom Evie was seen; and Loren Lambale, a bank executive who touts his contributions to the local shelter where Evie was a frequent guest. Heath’s strong sense of place throughout gives the story firm roots.
An auspicious mystery debut.Pub Date: June 9, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-692-37968-4
Page Count: 306
Publisher: Alatna Works
Review Posted Online: July 28, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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