A postmodern extravaganza narrated by a fetus: his conception on Twelfth Night begins the book and his birth on Columbus Day ends it, and in between those two events is a feast of language concerning a despoiled Mexico. In 1922, Mexico is sinking fast, and to bolster- the populace the government relies upon symbols, including a contest: the first boy born on the 12th of October, 1992 (the 500th anniversary of Columbus), will become Regent of the Nation. Angel and Angeles conceive El Nino: "I am the only one who made it to Treasure Island" (fertilization) for eventual birth into "the newly mutilated Sweet Fatherland." Thus commences a magically realistic Bildungsroman and a mythopoetic look at Mexican "lottery life," structured loosely as answers to a series of questions offered by both parents and the fetus. "This is the novel," the fetus says, "I am imagining inside my mother's egg." Long biographies of Angel (whose life is a compendium of "family witchcraft" as he "searched for a nation built to last") and of Angeles (a Platonist with a "multitrack mind") are juxtaposed to (and eventually dovetailed with) a national political plot involving, among others, the Ayatollah Matamoros and his mistress, The Last Playboy Centerfold. It's quite a balancing act, consisting of pranks, slapstick, eloquent set pieces, social satire, and Borgean games (". . .language gestates and grows with me, not one minute, not one centimeter before or after or less or more than I myself"). This "web of complications" comes to an end only with the final journey down the birth canal, when the narrator forgets everything. Fuentes, sometimes too erudite for his own good, gets it together here—developing an inventive literary conceit into a multilayered meditation on the plight of contemporary Mexico.
Pub Date: Aug. 1, 1989
ISBN: 1564783391
Page Count: 550
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: Sept. 23, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1989
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.
A violent surfacing of adolescence (which has little in common with Tarkington's earlier, broadly comic, Seventeen) has a compulsive impact.
"Nobody big except me" is the dream world of Holden Caulfield and his first person story is down to the basic, drab English of the pre-collegiate. For Holden is now being bounced from fancy prep, and, after a vicious evening with hall- and roommates, heads for New York to try to keep his latest failure from his parents. He tries to have a wild evening (all he does is pay the check), is terrorized by the hotel elevator man and his on-call whore, has a date with a girl he likes—and hates, sees his 10 year old sister, Phoebe. He also visits a sympathetic English teacher after trying on a drunken session, and when he keeps his date with Phoebe, who turns up with her suitcase to join him on his flight, he heads home to a hospital siege. This is tender and true, and impossible, in its picture of the old hells of young boys, the lonesomeness and tentative attempts to be mature and secure, the awful block between youth and being grown-up, the fright and sickness that humans and their behavior cause the challenging, the dramatization of the big bang. It is a sorry little worm's view of the off-beat of adult pressure, of contemporary strictures and conformity, of sentiment….
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.Pub Date: June 15, 1951
ISBN: 0316769177
Page Count: -
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1951
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
APPRECIATIONS
Genetically engineered dinosaurs run amok in Crichton's new, vastly entertaining science thriller. From the introduction alone—a classically Crichton-clear discussion of the implications of biotechnological research—it's evident that the Harvard M.D. has bounced back from the science-fantasy silliness of Sphere (1987) for another taut reworking of the Frankenstein theme, as in The Andromeda Strain and The Terminal Man. Here, Dr. Frankenstein is aging billionaire John Hammond, whose monster is a manmade ecosystem based on a Costa Rican island. Designed as the world's ultimate theme park, the ecosystem boasts climate and flora of the Jurassic Age and—most spectacularly—15 varieties of dinosaurs, created by elaborate genetic engineering that Crichton explains in fascinating detail, rich with dino-lore and complete with graphics. Into the park, for a safety check before its opening, comes the novel's band of characters—who, though well drawn, double as symbolic types in this unsubtle morality play. Among them are hero Alan Grant, noble paleontologist; Hammond, venal and obsessed; amoral dino-designer Henry Wu; Hammond's two innocent grandchildren; and mathematician Ian Malcolm, who in long diatribes serves as Crichton's mouthpiece to lament the folly of science. Upon arrival, the visitors tour the park; meanwhile, an industrial spy steals some dino embryos by shutting down the island's power—and its security grid, allowing the beasts to run loose. The bulk of the remaining narrative consists of dinos—ferocious T. Rex's, voracious velociraptors, venom-spitting dilophosaurs—stalking, ripping, and eating the cast in fast, furious, and suspenseful set-pieces as the ecosystem spins apart. And can Grant prevent the dinos from escaping to the mainland to create unchecked havoc? Though intrusive, the moralizing rarely slows this tornado-paced tale, a slick package of info-thrills that's Crichton's most clever since Congo (1980)—and easily the most exciting dinosaur novel ever written. A sure-fire best-seller.
Pub Date: Nov. 7, 1990
ISBN: 0394588169
Page Count: 424
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Sept. 21, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1990
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
