And who else would trouble to inform us that “The Emperor Justinian, . . . believed that homosexuality caused earthquakes”?...
The lives, loves and (numerous) eccentricities of the residents of an Edinburgh boardinghouse.
Written in 110 installments and published five times weekly in The Scotsman, Smith’s appealing comedy (also see p. 321) swiftly introduces its major characters, then follows their separate and shared adventures like a large friendly dog (one of which, incidentally, makes several amusing appearances). Pat, a university student muddling trough her second “gap year,” nurses a hopeless passion for smashingly handsome—and absurdly narcissistic—“flatmate” Bruce, while politely deflecting the hesitant attentions of Matthew, in whose mostly unpatronized art gallery she more or less works. Super-supercilious doting mom Irene micromanages her precocious five-year-old Bertie’s progressive education, ignoring his obvious desire to be a real kid and misbehave. Coffee-bar owner and autodidact Big Lou plays Proust-loving mother hen to a clutch of customers that features Matthew and his Mutt-and-Jeff friends Ronnie and Pete. This glum trio balances the Todds (owners of the surveying firm where Bruce blithely toils): morose Gordon, his buttoned-up brother Raeburn and the latter’s annoyingly bubbly wife Sasha, who aims to pair up their manless daughter Lizzie with the dashing Bruce. Also, forthright wealthy widow Domenica, who undertakes to raise Pat’s worldliness quotient, and effusive artist Angus Lordie (proud owner of the aforementioned mutt, Cyril). Smith’s well-paced plot accommodates a possibly valuable painting’s dizzying misadventures and a lavishly planned and hilariously pointless Conservative Ball (attended by only six—count ’em—“guests”), as well as a genial cameo appearance by mystery novelist Ian Rankin. You feel it could go on for a 110 thousand episodes—and may, if Smith continues on the sure-footed path that’s making him something very like Scotland’s P.G. Wodehouse.
And who else would trouble to inform us that “The Emperor Justinian, . . . believed that homosexuality caused earthquakes”? Sheer readerly bliss.Pub Date: June 14, 2005
ISBN: 1-4000-7944-6
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Anchor
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2005
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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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