Metafictive, multilayered storytelling. But the book may leave many readers wondering what the point is.
A slim, suggestive, seafaring fable introduces the Icelandic author to America.
Something of an Icelandic Renaissance man (From the Mouth of the Whale, 2011, etc.), the novelist, poet and playwright has also collaborated with multimedia musical artist Björk (and earned an Oscar nomination in the process). The first American publication of this 2005 novel (which was honored as that year’s Best Icelandic Novel in his homeland) will likely attract a broader readership to an author revered by peers including David Mitchell and Junot Díaz. It leaps across centuries, blurs the line between myth and reality, and features a shape-shifting storyteller who was once a girl and then a gull before becoming a seaman. Yet, he isn’t the narrator, but the teller of one of the stories within the story, which is related by the fictional author of Memoirs of a Herring Inspector, an aged gentleman devoted to his “chief preoccupation, the link between fish consumption and the superiority of the Nordic race.” In 1949, his theories somehow lead to an invitation to voyage on a merchant ship, where he discovers to his consternation that the meals are rarely fish, but more often something like “horse sausage with mashed potatoes and white sauce,” and where each evening features stories from the aforementioned seaman, who finds inspiration in a sliver of wood (which later stirs the loins of the novel’s narrator and serves to link the storytelling impulse with the sexual urge). His tales concern Jason and the Argonauts, a mythical adventure that the storyteller apparently experienced firsthand. Amid theories about how man evolved from fish, dreams that make implausible stories seem even more far-fetched and the narrator’s realization of “the crew members’ tendency to behave as if everything I said was incomprehensible,” the narrative proceeds to a climax in which reality (fictional or otherwise) collapses in upon itself.
Metafictive, multilayered storytelling. But the book may leave many readers wondering what the point is.Pub Date: May 1, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-374-28907-2
Page Count: 160
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2013
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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