A novel rich with experience and imagination.
Displaying a stylistic audacity that is often dazzling (and occasionally dizzying), this debut novel mixes fictionalized memoir, magical realism and a Catch-22 sense of war’s tragicomic absurdity.
Like his narrator, Aleksandar, novelist Stanišic left his native Bosnia for Germany as a teenager to escape the devastations of civil war and ethnic cleansing. But the 29-year-old author hasn’t simply translated his adolescent experience into fiction. Instead, he has fashioned a protagonist who considers himself a magician with words, an imaginative storyteller, “the artist of the lovely Unfinished!” Inspired by his grandfather, whose heart expired in a race with Carl Lewis in a record-breaking 100-yard dash (as they watch it on TV, his heart finishes before Lewis does), Aleksandar dedicates himself to spinning “stories that can make us laugh or cry, best of all both at the same time.” Some of these stories find him switching to the voice of a friend or an acquaintance. A significant part of the novel, and thus his story, is a series of letters to a girlfriend, perhaps imaginary, whom he hopes to help escape as he has (one of them is signed, “Do you remember me?”, another asks “Did I make you up?”). There’s also an extended book within the book, dedicated to his grandfather, with a foreword written by his grandmother (or written by Aleksandar in the voice of his grandmother?). Obvious throughout is that long after Aleksandar has left his homeland (“a country that doesn’t exist any more”), his homeland remains within him. He poetically describes what was once a part of Yugoslavia and later Bosnia as “A cold, bleak country / Naked and hungry…It is defiant / With sleep.” The innocence of Aleksandar, as he describes an upheaval that defies a young man’s understanding, is expertly filtered through the sensibility of a slightly older but still precocious novelist.
A novel rich with experience and imagination.Pub Date: June 1, 2008
ISBN: 978-0-8021-1866-6
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Grove
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 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
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.
Sisters work together to solve a child-abandonment case.
Ellie and Julia Cates have never been close. Julia is shy and brainy; Ellie gets by on charm and looks. Their differences must be tossed aside when a traumatized young girl wanders in from the forest into their hometown in Washington. The sisters’ professional skills are put to the test. Julia is a world-renowned child psychologist who has lost her edge. She is reeling from a case that went publicly sour. Though she was cleared of all wrongdoing, Julia’s name was tarnished, forcing her to shutter her Beverly Hills practice. Ellie Barton is the local police chief in Rain Valley, who’s never faced a tougher case. This is her chance to prove she is more than just a fading homecoming queen, but a scarcity of clues and a reluctant victim make locating the girl’s parents nearly impossible. Ellie places an SOS call to her sister; she needs an expert to rehabilitate this wild-child who has been living outside of civilization for years. Confronted with her professional demons, Julia once again has the opportunity to display her talents and salvage her reputation. Hannah (The Things We Do for Love, 2004, etc.) is at her best when writing from the girl’s perspective. The feral wolf-child keeps the reader interested long after the other, transparent characters have grown tiresome. Hannah’s torturously over-written romance passages are stale, but there are surprises in store as the sisters set about unearthing Alice’s past and creating a home for her.
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.Pub Date: March 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-345-46752-3
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2005
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