Some laughs, but very much the same old.
Five-time Emmy-nominated screenwriter (Late Night with David Letterman, etc.) debuts with a lackluster Sex and the City clone.
Ruby Capote is a Boston columnist whose beat is the woe of single women. She oughta know: Her silly boyfriend Doug collects the little plastic thingies from bread bags and calls his purple Porsche “The Grape.” Hoping to move on, Ruby sends tear sheets and a six-pack to the editor of the New York News, handsome Michael Hobbs, who eventually assigns her to the men-are-scum beat. He oughta know: he’s quasi-engaged to a beauty, but obviously eager to hook up with Ruby, whose new circle of friends offers plenty of material. Amoral and gorgeous model Skorka prefers married men—they don’t get attached and never leave their socks lying around. Jenn is an overworked factotum for a manically demanding media personality. Lily’s never had much luck with men—is she a lesbian? Divorced Danielle just dumped her 23-year-old swain after discovering he’s the son of a previous lover. And so on, through mildly comedic matters that include a vagina visualization workshop á la Eve Ensler—but Ruby has other things on her mind and can’t imagine what her vagina would say or wear (if it could). Doug’s been offered a job in New York, but that relationship is totally over, even though the clueless chump doesn’t think so. A hallway flirtation and subsequent fling with a sexy neighbor, TV exec Tom, goes nowhere, which leaves only Michael, but he’s her boss. Obligatory forays are taken into Ruby’s past: the car crash that killed her alcoholic father; the adolescent crush she had on her shrink. These alone may not explain why her relationships with men are difficult, but when she finds out Michael’s dark secret, she’s ready to believe that men really are scum. The girlfriends concur, though Ruby makes up her own mind in the end.
Some laughs, but very much the same old.Pub Date: Feb. 26, 2002
ISBN: 0-375-50514-8
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2001
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
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