A vivid evocation of the conflict between reason and spirituality.
A skeptical lawyer wrestles with a crisis of faith—gaining it, not losing it—as he discovers his own possibly supernatural powers in this debut novel of ideas.
Will Alexander is leading a mediocre, hollow life as an attorney for a Manhattan law firm when he meets Erica Wells, a social worker who incorporates New Age mysticism into her practice. He’s smitten by her green eyes; she’s smitten by his green aura, which only she can sense. Will takes Erica’s disparagement of Western evidence-based medicine in favor of “universal healing and energy”—featuring detoxification, herbal supplements, and regression therapy—for so much nonsense. But he puts up with her eccentric enthusiasms for the sake of her passion and vibrancy. But then, during a chance encounter, Will, with no effort or intention, apparently cures a legal client of an anxiety disorder. Others seek him out: He dispels a tech mogul’s fatal neurological ailment with a few minutes of meditation and sends an old man’s cancer into remission during a night of drinking. Will is nonplussed by all this: He doesn’t feel like he’s doing anything to cure people and thinks his successes might be a placebo effect or pure coincidence. Still, word of mouth creates demand for his services, so he sets up shop as the world’s most diffident healer, warning patients that he claims no special powers and makes no promises and telling them not to pay him unless they feel like it. Will’s self-disparagement perversely inspires trust, and his practice thrives—and makes him a target of a cynical investigative journalist intent on proving him a fraud. Himmel’s entertaining novel is on one level a fine comedy of ideological manners. Much of it unfolds in funny, awkward dinner-table conversations as Erica floats her ardent mystical beliefs and dares her dubious companions to mock them while they search for ways to steer the conversation to safer waters. The author’s sharply etched characters and smart, observant prose shrewdly capture the ways people think and talk about religious and philosophical issues. “I was always struck by how he managed to marshal an articulate discourse in defense of shallow insights,” Will muses of one blowhard, and he calls the earnest, didactic New Age tomes Erica presses on him “Soviet propaganda without the charm.” But the tale takes Will’s hangdog spiritual quest seriously while avoiding the clichés of New Age fiction. There are no revealed certitudes, no channeling of omniscient beings from the astral plane. Will remains a flawed, neurotic man torn between his lawyerly devotion to evidence and logic and the haunting, ambiguous glimpses of supernatural forces that intrude on him. He is perpetually in doubt about whether his abilities are real or just luck and hopeful figments of the imagination—especially when they fail. And they work no miraculous healing in his own life. His new calling often feels like a drag and leads him into a serious ethical lapse; what enlightenment he gains comes through painful experience and self-examination rather than clairvoyance. As he grapples with metaphysical mysteries, even dyed-in-the-wool skeptics should find his struggle compelling.
A vivid evocation of the conflict between reason and spirituality.Pub Date: Oct. 8, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-62634-530-0
Page Count: 312
Publisher: Greenleaf Book Group Press
Review Posted Online: Sept. 7, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2018
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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