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THE TRAGEDY OF MISTER MORN

A minor work in the overall Nabokov canon, but an intriguing riff on Elizabethan drama nonetheless.

An early, recently unearthed play by the 20th-century master, heavily critical of politics and hinting at the brilliance to come.

Nabokov (1899-1977) was living in Prague in 1923 when he wrote this play, rediscovered in 1997 and published in book form in Russia in 2008. But the communist revolution in his homeland is its key inspiration. Set in an unnamed country, the story tracks a tug of war for power: Tremens is the leader of a failed coup who wants the land reduced to ashes, and Mister Morn is the gentle but successful poet/leader who obscures his status as king. Shakespeare is Nabokov’s model in a variety of ways. Most obviously, the play was written in iambic pentameter (attentively but not rigorously preserved by the translators). And its references to Othello, along with its themes of madness, leadership, family lines and how women support powerful men, show Nabokov took plenty of cues from the Bard of Avon. Admirers of LolitaPale Fire and Pnin have to work hard to detect glimpses of Nabokov’s best-known work here, but it’s not impossible: In his introduction, co-translator and Nabokov scholar Karshan explores how the play’s references to masks and sex would re-emerge in Nabokov’s mature novels. The dynamism of the play’s romantic relationships makes it a firmly modernist work. Through Midia, the wife of an imprisoned revolutionary who’s in love with Morn, he explores infidelity without high moral judgment. And in Ella, Tremens’ daughter, he’s imagined a vibrant, nervy woman quick to question her father’s “equivocating little words.” Morn’s vagueness dulls the play’s climax somewhat, but he’s also the story’s chief asset: “All my power lay in my mysteriousness,” he proclaims in a final soliloquy, an apt line for a tale about the mysteriousness of power.

A minor work in the overall Nabokov canon, but an intriguing riff on Elizabethan drama nonetheless.

Pub Date: March 19, 2013

ISBN: 978-0-307-96081-8

Page Count: 176

Publisher: Knopf

Review Posted Online: Jan. 2, 2013

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2013

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A LITTLE LIFE

The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.

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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

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SUMMER ISLAND

The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with...

Talk-show queen takes tumble as millions jeer.

Nora Bridges is a wildly popular radio spokesperson for family-first virtues, but her loyal listeners don't know that she walked out on her husband and teenaged daughters years ago and didn't look back. Now that a former lover has sold racy pix of naked Nora and horny himself to a national tabloid, her estranged daughter Ruby, an unsuccessful stand-up comic in Los Angeles, has been approached to pen a tell-all. Greedy for the fat fee she's been promised, Ruby agrees and heads for the San Juan Islands, eager to get reacquainted with the mom she plans to betray. Once in the family homestead, nasty Ruby alternately sulks and glares at her mother, who is temporarily wheelchair-bound as a result of a post-scandal car crash. Uncaring, Ruby begins writing her side of the story when she's not strolling on the beach with former sweetheart Dean Sloan, the son of wealthy socialites who basically ignored him and his gay brother Eric. Eric, now dying of cancer and also in a wheelchair, has returned to the island. This dismal threesome catch up on old times, recalling their childhood idylls on the island. After Ruby's perfect big sister Caroline shows up, there's another round of heartfelt talk. Nora gradually reveals the truth about her unloving husband and her late father's alcoholism, which led her to seek the approval of others at the cost of her own peace of mind. And so on. Ruby is aghast to discover that she doesn't know everything after all, but Dean offers her subdued comfort. Happy endings await almost everyone—except for readers of this nobly preachy snifflefest.

The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with syrupy platitudes about life and love.

Pub Date: March 1, 2001

ISBN: 0-609-60737-5

Page Count: 336

Publisher: Crown

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2001

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