There isn’t a single significant female character, and for a long novel, there isn’t much plot. Two of them are gay, one straight and one bisexual. 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. It’s all very entertaining but also raises consequential questions about whether money can solve a moral crisis.Ī bizarrely soulful ride through New Orleans with corporate high jinks and some mystical, unseen forces adding to the experience.įour 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. The family crisis is as pressing as the oil disaster. The Melançons’ stomping ground, the boisterous streets of New Orleans, is described in raucous and earthy details, a perpetual morning-after that juxtaposes inebriated tourists and battered locals. Clarke’s riotous, amusing novel parallels real events, namely the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, which does help ground a story that moves toward a moderately supernatural conclusion. An elusive necklace of gold coins may hold the key to Madame’s location as Duke tries to stay afloat with his career and his marriage. As Duke’s wife and kids flee the craziness for Houston, Duke searches for answers about his mother from colorful locals, including a Kurt Vonnegut–like homeless guy and a shady villain. The company transfers Duke and his wife and kids to New Orleans to deal with the fallout, and Duke learns of a family crisis “when their witchy mother runs out into the hot, syrupy night, chasing a calico cat.” Madame Melançon doesn’t come home, and the family launches a search effort while Duke’s new home is invaded by a gaze of raccoons.
During an accident on a rig in the Gulf of Mexico, 50 workers died, and oil is pouring into the Gulf. The youngest son, Duke, is a corporate lawyer in the External Affairs Department for oil giant Mandala Worldwide. His father married a Russian fortuneteller, known as Madame Melançon, and they had seven sons and one girl.
An oil company lawyer moves home to New Orleans and finds that his fortuneteller mother has disappeared in Clarke’s ( The Worthy, 2006, etc.) novel.ĭuke Melançon grew up in New Orleans, at the corner of Magazine and Napoleon, in a fancy, inherited house that his wild Cajun family has practically destroyed.
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