Wacky while paying close attention to storyline, making for a strange caper indeed.
From Kennedy (An Introduction to Fiction, 2014) comes a novel about life at a peculiar Catholic college in New Jersey.
Now that World War II has ended, thousands of former soldiers are able to attend college on the GI Bill. Looking to make the most of the situation, St. Cassian of Imola decides it will “become the largest Catholic college east of the Mississippi.” Filling faculty positions with displaced persons and Quonset huts with students, the college makes ambitious if hasty plans. Weathering the storm is one Father Douglas Knox, a priest with a knack for karate and a love of Gauloise cigarettes. He also coaches the basketball team despite death threats recommending he do otherwise. With many of the school’s dealings linked to mobster Ricky Peru, Knox has his suspicions about who might be behind it all. Meanwhile, a boy nicknamed Moon—“Somebody in high school said I looked like Moon Mullins in the funnypapers”—finds himself in love with his beautiful, sex-crazed biology teacher, Aisling Vastasi. Though he’s warned not to go near her, as she’s married to one of Peru’s lackeys, Moon can’t resist. With these and other equally colorful characters set to collide, possibilities for excitement abound. There’s plenty of sassy dialogue—as when Aisling informs her biology class, “I used to be a second lieutenant in the WAVES, so don’t think you can get away with any happy horseshit”—and randiness: “Scrotum Pohl lay naked on the bed, his six-foot-eight body rippling with muscle, skin shining with massage oil.” The wonky adventure is at its sharpest when following rough-and-tumble Father Knox, as if he’s traversing a comically scripted film noir. However, the book falls into stereotypes with much of the opposition. Ricky Peru owns not only a black Rolls Royce with vanity plates, but also the well-preserved “Pizza of Paramus,” a pie that has cheese melted into the shape of the Virgin Mary: “The Virgin had a pepperoni mouth.” While distracting, the clichés don’t derail the overall quirkiness of this raucous tale.
Wacky while paying close attention to storyline, making for a strange caper indeed.Pub Date: July 14, 2014
ISBN: 978-0692270738
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Curtis Brown Unlimited
Review Posted Online: April 8, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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