Rural backbiting and stagnation don't create much excitement in a mild adult debut by the author of Fool's Hill (1992) and other YA titles. The lives of everyone in Maddock, Va., seem to revolve around Valerie, a bumpkin enchantress who graduates from college, dumps long-time beau Joe, and jets to Hollywood to reap the fame her hometown has taught her to expect. Movie walk-ons and an unfulfilling marriage to a one-hit-wonder screenwriter make it apparent that she's a small fish floundering in an overwhelming ocean. She returns to Maddock because home is where the heart is, right? Not necessarily. It turns out her best buddies from childhood, wisecracking thin-fat-thin Mary Grace and meek second fiddle Tess, resent her. The three have a rocky reunion during which Valerie learns that she made her friends' lives miserable by stealing their men and the spotlight. As a result, Mary Grace has weight, self-esteem, and man problems, while Tess lives in justified fear that Joe, whom she married after Valerie left, chose her by default. Little do they realize that Valerie herself has troubles. She's 34 years old, her marriage and career are failures, and she has been reduced to moving home, living in the past (via sentimental rendezvous with Joe), and dating high schoolers. In short, she's mediocre—and the novel is about the same. Hall's depiction of life in a stifling, nosy small town is accurate, but the dialogue occasionally lapses into buffoonery as Tess fights off advances from her smitten gynecologist, or Tess and Joe throw a party for a woman they dislike. Despite the marital scandals and bickering, this little world is riveting only to those who populate it. The characters, the readers, and especially the author (whose solid abilities we hope will lead to more exciting books) would all be better off if they left Maddock.
Pub Date: Aug. 1, 1994
ISBN: 0-671-78422-6
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 1994
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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