An uplifting read about the difficulty of leaving an unhealthy situation.
Costello’s debut novel explores the stress of a marriage through the eyes of a thoughtful wife.
Jelina King is a woman at war with herself, battling her belief that she’s failing her family and her resentment toward her husband for his irresponsibility and insensitivity. When she and Dylan were dating seven years ago, he lavished her with romance and care. Now, a series of career changes has drained their savings and caused them to amass student loan debt, and Dylan shows little motivation to find a new job. Instead, he spends hours on the computer and stays out all night, drinking with his friends. Meanwhile, Jelina works full time as a therapist, and in her off hours, she maintains their house in coastal California and takes care of their 4-year-old daughter, Lily. In addition, her phone is constantly bombarded by texts from her estranged father, who, she feels, failed to protect her from abuse by a relative. The constant stress has broken her down; at one point, she even has a panic attack during a patient’s session. Lily, meanwhile, suffers from severe shyness and frequent urinary accidents. One morning, an emotionally exhausted Jelina rear-ends another car. Its owner is a tantalizingly beautiful woman named Natalia. The chance meeting transforms Jelina’s life, as Natalia helps her realize a powerful truth: “You deserve to be happy.” Throughout this novel, Costello shows a deep understanding of human psychology, resulting in characters that seem startlingly real. The prose is expressive and well-paced, with descriptions of settings that blend seamlessly with Jelina’s thoughts. Although her state of mind occasionally makes her an unreliable narrator, her perspective is often moving. The romance that blossoms between her and Natalia seems inevitable from their first meeting. However, its development is mesmerizing and drives the narrative’s positivity. The conclusion effectively emphasizes the inherent instability of life.
An uplifting read about the difficulty of leaving an unhealthy situation.Pub Date: May 27, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-73306-792-8
Page Count: 262
Publisher: Lamindspa Publishing
Review Posted Online: July 10, 2019
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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