An entertaining tale of an off-kilter mind coping with shady surroundings, told with literary flair.
Creeping schizophrenia takes the reins of a young doctor’s mind in this subtle psychological mystery.
Simon Felsper, a medical student in London during the 1950s, has a preternaturally soothing bedside manner that makes him a favorite with patients. He also has, according to a psychiatry lecture he attends, the symptoms of a schizophrenic—an obsession with good-luck rituals; an authoritative voice in his head whom he dubs One; a penchant for biblical-sounding pronouncements like “You are the chosen one”; and a feeling that he is the target of a vague plot by one of his classmates, an aristocratic rake with the deceptively harmless nickname of Badger. When he is exiled to San Francisco after a run-in with Badger, Simon’s medical practice swells along with his sense of destiny. Convinced by One’s declarations that he is an enlightened soul, Simon believes that he can cure vague pains and malaise just by laying on his hands—and soon a devoted following of patients agrees. Yet he can’t shake the influence, real or imagined, of Badger, whose tentacles extend to a senior colleague and a high-priced call girl whom Simon is seeing and eventually entangle Simon in a murder. The author makes this odd, potentially claustrophobic story into an entertaining, slightly satirical novel of manners with noir-ish overtones, as Simon’s sensitive, grandiose perspective plays off the prosaic, crass outlooks of the people around him in a symphony of mutual incomprehension. Brooke tells the yarn with a dry wit, sharp-eyed prose and a knack for vibrant characterizations. (Badger, a confection of bluster, bonhomie and sly malice, is indelible.) The author is also a neurologist, and one of the book’s manifold pleasures is its well-observed portrait of the medical culture of 50 years ago, when authoritarian doctors treated patients with exquisite disdain. Brooke gives us a shrewd, absorbing study of a sensitive soul drawn into paranoid delusions that may not be so far-fetched.
An entertaining tale of an off-kilter mind coping with shady surroundings, told with literary flair.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-0986823206
Page Count: 424
Publisher: Michael Brooke Publishing
Review Posted Online: May 23, 2011
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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