An accessible and remarkably fair-minded book of particular importance in its immediate relevance.
This valuable and convincing second novel by Arab-Israeli journalist Kashua (Dancing Arabs, 2004) captures how the Middle East conflict affects a young man of similar background to the novelist’s own.
The story concerns an Arab-Israeli journalist, who, stung by the discrimination of his Jewish neighbors and colleagues, moves back to the small Arab town where he and his wife were born. Because his editor is increasingly mistrustful of Arabs and indifferent to their point of view, the hero has practically no work, which he experiences as shameful and conceals from his family. Thus the move home feels like a step backward, or worse, since the town has declined in safety and civility: Gang-bangers with Uzis shake down local storekeepers, and Arabs with Israeli citizenship exploit illegal Palestinian day workers. The most ominous change is in how the town is categorized by Jewish Israelis. Without warning, tanks suddenly seal off the village. Phone service, electrical power, water and sewer lines are shut down. This cataclysmic break with normalcy has no explanation. Like characters in Kafka, the locals try to puzzle out a reason for the hardships they are subjected to. When a contractor on his way to work in a Jewish settlement approaches a barricade to talk his way through, his truck is blown up by mortar fire. Later, he will be described on Israeli television as a terrorist. The narrator’s father, a village elder, trusts his Jewish compatriots; younger men riot. Without food or water in the parching heat, plagued by the stench of sewage and uncollected garbage, the villagers wait helplessly, none knowing why their rights and services have been withdrawn. But as brutal and irrational events unfold, they must still find a way to live and work.
An accessible and remarkably fair-minded book of particular importance in its immediate relevance.Pub Date: June 9, 2006
ISBN: 0-8021-7021-8
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Black Cat/Grove
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2006
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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