A How To Make an American Quilt wannabe that has already sold 25,000 copies in a self-published (1992) edition. Unlike bestselling Whitney Otto, however, motivational speaker and first- novelist Webb abandons any pretense of a story and allows her ``lessons'' to overtake—utterly—the barely breathing narrative. Bank employee Jennifer, a recent college graduate, and serious-minded high-school student Susan are sisters, but that's all we learn about them, since they're used only as vehicles to promote their mother's and their paternal grandmother's purported words of wisdom. On one of their monthly visits to Grama, the sisters decide to undertake a project: They will each, with Grama's expert guidance, design and make a quilt of their own in a year's time. Each month, the girls and their advice-spouting (``Cooperation is always a better way''), monologue-spewing psychologist mother drive to the seniors' complex in Clareville, where Grama has lived and quilted for 20 years. Over the 12 months before the old woman, predictably, passes on—leaving her two granddaughters with finished quilts and a lifetime of jargony catch phrases for success (``Persevere Through the Tough Times,'' etc.)- -Jennifer and Susan trace, cut, and sew with all the spark and personality of two automatons with failing batteries. As if to hammer home the point that women pass on women's wisdom to women, the men in these women's lives are kept conveniently out of the picture; brother Robbie's at college out west, and father Jack (along with his father) died years before. Most telling, perhaps, when Grama worries that she may sound like a ``Grand Old Guru,'' you find yourself nodding in consent. The literary equivalent of a dose of castor oil, this plodding self-helper reads more like a bad sermon than real fiction. (Literary Guild alternate selection; $200,000 ad/promo; author tour; TV satellite tour)
Pub Date: May 1, 1996
ISBN: 0-06-017463-3
Page Count: 224
Publisher: HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 1996
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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