Canadian novelist and storywriter Gowdy (We So Seldom Look on Love, 1993, etc.) continues to indulge her passion for (and remarkable understanding of) those existing on society's fringe- -this time in a tale of a massively dysfunctional family with enough neuroses and secrets to keep an army of therapists employed. Joan makes quite an entrance into the Canary family by remarking, ``Oh, no, not again!'' at her birth. The astonished midwife promptly drops her on her head, and as Joan develops into a ghostly, speechless child who lives in her closet, yet who can mimic even the slightest noise, it's this accident at birth that gets the blame. She may not resemble anyone in the family physically, but with her odd habits she's right at home. Grandmother Doris claims her as a daughter, since Joan's real mother Sonja is only 15; Doris is also just discovering, ecstatically, that she's gay. Grandfather Gordon, himself a closet homosexual and no stranger to affairs, had one with the handyman in his office building, a hunk who left him and is later discovered to have had a go with Sonja—and in fact is Joan's father. Then there's Marcy, the older daughter of Doris and Gordon, who believes she's telepathically linked to Joan and thus speaks in the plural whenever either of them is the subject of conversation, but who also grows up to be determinedly promiscuous. Meanwhile, Joan herself, at first contact with a piano, proves to be a musical genius; she's ideally suited to become the family confessor as well, until, after years in the role, she finds a unique way to bring everyone's secrets into the open, all but sacrificing herself to make her family whole. Absurd hilarity is mixed well here with a persistent, gentle probing of family dynamics, and crisply defined situations contribute a bell-like clarity to this affecting and unusual domestic saga as it unfolds.
Pub Date: April 1, 1997
ISBN: 1-883642-33-7
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Steerforth
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 1997
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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