Like the future it depicts, gales of hot air make this dreary saga an oppressive experience.
Global warming brings environmental catastrophe–and relationship problems–in this sluggish sci-fi epic.
Toward the mid-21st century, climate change becomes apocalyptic. Drought and torrential rains cripple agriculture. Super-hurricanes ravage the East Coast every few weeks, killing tens of thousands each time, while the West Coast endures 150 mph “Pacific Screamer” winds and daily earthquakes. As Eurasia becomes overrun by warlords, America suffers under draconian Green Laws imposed by the despotic “New United Nations”–energy is strictly rationed, unauthorized motorists are shot on sight and miscreants are sentenced to turning giant hamster wheels at power plants. Mankind’s last hope comes when the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence project contacts the alien Rostackmidarifians, who offer to establish a “safe location” for earthling elites. The lurid environmental cataclysms are but a backdrop to the many personal melodramas unfolding–Carlos, Earth’s Ambassador to the aliens, who avoids emotional intimacy ever since his mom cut off his toe; Roxanne, a seeing-eye dog trainer who despairs of Carlos’s ever loving her; SETI scientist Simon, who falls for Roxanne; and Simon’s boss Susan, who loves Carlos but is sleeping with her boss Quentin, a UN honcho who personifies humanity’s moral corruption. No eco-crisis is too pressing to distract these characters from droning on about their feelings for each other, or from tiresome bureaucratic intrigues and sophomoric debates about whether ends justify means. Gottlieb’s portentous prose (“[Carlos] knows humanity waited too long to address the horrors of climate change and feels he as well has waited too long to claim Susan’s heart”) devolves into trite surrealism (“a large fish sitting on a glossy red platter sings ‘Mammy;’ tapping out the tune with its tail”) during Carlos’s hallucinatory trip to the Rostackmidarifians’ planet. Buried deep in the bloated narrative is a garbled warning about the ecological and spiritual dangers of the godlike pursuit of scientific advancement.
Like the future it depicts, gales of hot air make this dreary saga an oppressive experience.Pub Date: July 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-9753655-0-9
Page Count: -
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 23, 2010
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
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
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