An auspicious mystery debut.
In this bleak Alaskan noir, an embittered, street-hardened woman is determined to find her estranged mother’s killer.
A letter summons a reluctant Kris Gabriel, 24, now living in Los Angeles, to her native Alaska to reunite with her mother, Evie, an alcoholic whom she left nine years before. There’s no love lost between the two, and when Evie is brutally murdered, her body discovered in a stream, some expect Kris to “be glad to bury her mother, to put her last connection to her life in Alaska behind her.” Instead, she wants only to get justice for a woman who “had been stepped on by everybody who’d come through her life,” including police, lovers, landlords, “and social workers who’d nit-picked her with a million chicken-shit rules.” Heath’s debut novel is gripping from the get-go, populated by a gallery of indelible characters and set against a landscape that’s both breathtakingly beautiful and punishing, as in this unnerving image of Evie’s floating body: “The water washed over her rhythmically, like a pulse.” Heath writes efficient scenes of suspense and jolting violence, but the quieter, more reflective moments are the most memorable: “They sat sipping the tea; looking out the window at the shadows cast by the city’s hard yellow lights and listening to the gusts of wind tap the window with pellets of rain.” Genre conventions will put readers on guard to suspect the motives of all who cross Kris’ path, including Ben Stewart, the outdoorsman who’d befriended Evie and later found her body; Vern, the last man with whom Evie was seen; and Loren Lambale, a bank executive who touts his contributions to the local shelter where Evie was a frequent guest. Heath’s strong sense of place throughout gives the story firm roots.
An auspicious mystery debut.Pub Date: June 9, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-692-37968-4
Page Count: 306
Publisher: Alatna Works
Review Posted Online: July 28, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
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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