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MAN OF NAZARETH

Re-telling the story of Jesus is like re-inventing the wheel—it's Been Done, leaving a novelist merely the option of new alignments. This novel is based on Burgess' screen play for Zeffirelli's TV film, and considering the formidable hurdles, it's a somewhat strained but certainly consistent version. Burgess uses an anonymous, detached narrator who manages to bring the miracles and the teachings of Jesus—couched in a muscular idiom that sheds all mystic shadings—into a fairly comfortable balance. Some miracles are reported simply and briefly (the raising of Lazarus, the appearance of the angel at the Annunciation and Nativity); one is twisted into an amusing possibility (at the marriage at Cana, the Prophet extolls water as wine for the Good); and a few are left misty but not mystic (at the birth of Jesus: "There was the sound of music, whether of the heavenly host singing Holy, holy, holy or of drunken men in the tavern, I do not know. . ."). Jesus here is a man of powerful voice and body, "a man who could eat whole sheep and wrestle with lions," and along the way Burgess indulges in some rather playful innovations—Jesus is married briefly to a wife who dies; Jesus and John the Baptist, as boys, discuss their future. He also worries a variegated humanity from the supporting cast: Judas is a young vulnerable intellectual; Thomas is a Downstairs retainer; the Romans are cynically witty; the Zealots steely activists. His main thrift, however, is the portrait of Jesus as a good and brilliant man for whom the kingdom of heaven could be on earth: "Enter the house of death and you leave time behind. . . . You may even say that the kingdom is now, that heaven and hell are now." Make of this what you will theologically—call it liberal Protestant or radical Catholic—but Burgess deserves A for effort in an impossible assignment.

Pub Date: April 8, 1979

ISBN: 0553133187

Page Count: 308

Publisher: McGraw-Hill

Review Posted Online: May 15, 2012

Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 1979

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A LITTLE LIFE

The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.

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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

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JURASSIC PARK

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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