In Strickland’s novel, one person’s messiah is another’s juvenile delinquent.
Annie Mullard had it all—a great job as an airline pilot, a handsome and successful husband, three beautiful children and a big house in Chicago. When the recession hits, Annie loses her job and the comfortable life she has known begins to collapse; her husband is cheating on her, her kids don’t like her and the family’s financial situation is so tight that she has to wheel her clothing down to the Golden Coin Laundromat when the washing machine breaks. Annie is fed up, frustrated and seriously depressed. Although she prays for help, the sudden appearance of Violet at the Laundromat is not what she had in mind. Violet looks like a goth teenager and claims to be a messiah who can help Annie change her life though the power of positive thinking. Yet Annie is full of doubts, expressing understandable incredulity at Violet’s claims and scoffing at the idea that she can simply choose to be happy. Annie is a challenging case, and Violet spends nearly 23 chapters (set almost exclusively within the walls of the dingy Laundromat) trying to convince Annie that changing her thoughts and her attitude is the key to changing her life. As a teaching method, and further proof that she just may be a messiah, Violet beams Annie into past lives and even a possible future, forcing Annie to truly reflect on her attitude and her choices thus far. Slowly, Annie realizes that she just might possess the power to will her way to happiness. Strickland, in her second novel, effectively combines the earnestness of Frank Capra’s It’s a Wonderful Life with the didactic voice of The Secret. With its timely, relatable story peppered liberally with pop-culture references and religious conviction, Strickland’s novel should strike a chord with readers who will relate to Annie’s struggles and search for a happier future. A lesson in faith and the power of positive thinking, all nestled within a satisfying story.
Pub Date: March 20, 2012
ISBN: 978-0981979458
Page Count: 228
Publisher: Kim Strickland-Sargent
Review Posted Online: Feb. 16, 2012
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
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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