The author of Lord of the Dead (1995), the story of the wildly bipolar Lord Byron becoming ruler of the planet's vampires at age 19, returns with a sequel and a fresh look at London's bloodsuckers. The story opens as a satirically rip-roaring 19th-century boy's adventure modeled on Gunga Din. A small group of ramrod British soldiers attack a temple of Kali high up in the Himalayas, only to find themselves facing Russian zombie/vampires enthralled by the goddess of destruction-and-bloodlust: She takes the form of a ravishingly beautiful vision of sexual horror named Lilah, who later turns up in London. The very amusing first 70 pages—as stiff-lipped British noncoms battle flesh-eating ghouls, and as Dr. John Eliot, also in India, investigates a horrible infection that melts brains and wastes the body, as well as a princely fortune that suddenly vanishes—are worth the ticket price. Eliot's research eventually sets him on Lilah's trail. Back in London, he's joined by theater manager Bram Stoker, who has not yet written Dracula but becomes knowledgeable about vampires while playing muddle-brow Watson to Eliot's Holmes. Eliot is enjoined by a young actress, Miss Lucy Ruthven, to look into her brother Arthur's murder and the disappearance of her guardian, Sir George Mowberley. The two men had been heading a parliamentary bill that would have a major impact on India. Trailing the lost jewels of Kalikshutra at last leads Eliot to Lilah and to a ghastly facedown with this supremely corrupted immortal who bathes in blood in a golden tub. Then come the real surprises—and Byron's return. The Victorian voice used throughout may have been fun to mimic, but Holland's own voice would have given him more intensity. Even Dracula's epistolary style can stultify.
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1997
ISBN: 0-671-54052-1
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Pocket
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1997
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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