Darkly comic take on the “greed is good” shenanigans that led up to the recent financial apocalypse.
Young Manhattan matron comes up with a unique solution to emerging threats to her family’s future.
There is something just a bit off about Daisy Greenbaum. In spite of her incredible wealth, good looks and bright twin daughters, she does not quite fit in among skeletal lady-lunchers in her Upper East Side social scene. While she manages for the most part to mask her inner rage, filling her dull days with charity projects, the burgeoning 2008 financial crisis finally offers her long-dormant inner sociopath a chance to run free. Her husband Dick is a Wall Street math whiz who has figured out how to make a killing in credit default swaps. But Dick, although deeply flawed, is beginning to fret over the long-term financial and ethical implications of his work for The Bank (think Goldman Sachs). He can see the end coming and wants to go to the authorities. But when he reaches out to his boss John, a preppy tool who has none of Dick’s scruples, John threatens to ruin him for even thinking of exposing them. Enter Daisy, who, unbeknownst to Dick, drugs and murders John while making it look like a suicide. So Dick gets promoted. Daisy is then vexed to discover that Dick’s former mistress, the Lady Petra Kingly, is once again sniffing around her husband. Trophy wife to a much-older man who is about to get caught running an elaborate Ponzi scheme, Lady Petra sees Dick as her only chance at a lucrative future. Dick, while no longer interested in Petra, fears that she will reveal his secrets. Daisy once again takes matters in hand, just as Dick starts to realize, with an appropriate amount of gratitude, what she is up to. Meanwhile, an ambitious young blogger, Candy Ross Rose, sees a career-making opportunity in taking down The Bank. She fixates on seducing none other than Dick Greenbaum. Big mistake. Jong-Fast’s edgy follow-up to Normal Girl (2000) seems meant to be a broad social satire about the über-wealthy, but it’s held back by the underwritten Daisy, whose murderous impulses are the most interesting thing about her.
Darkly comic take on the “greed is good” shenanigans that led up to the recent financial apocalypse.Pub Date: April 26, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-345-50189-9
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Villard
Review Posted Online: March 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2011
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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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