A celebration of the dysfunctional that will keep readers turning pages.
The latest offering from conceptual artist, writer, and performer Rosenthal (Soul & Psyche, 1998, etc.) is a satirical, fantastical, and philosophical novel, illustrated with surreal photographs.
Readers begin the story with Jack Rubin, a messianic figure who has unbelievable charisma, even as a graduate student. But he’s also at least mildly schizophrenic (hearing “The Voice of the Petty Accuser”) and cares much more for his ideas and ideals than for real people. He aims to usher in a perfect world or die trying. The story then adds in his girlfriend, Beatrice Stregasanta Madregiore, a blind African-American conceptual artist (specializing in “Avant-Conceptualism…in large scale public projects and theatrical events”) with fiercely devoted students. She eventually marries Jack off to one of those students, the seriously disturbed Caroline Klein. Over the course of the story, set from 1968 to 1985, Jack and Caroline marry and beget a daughter, Jewel Marie Rubin; Jack becomes world-renowned and eventually the United Nations’ secretary-general; and Caroline, high and hysterical most of the time, has a serious car accident, scarring Jewel horribly (and Jack urges against her getting plastic surgery). Beatrice, Jewel’s godmother, takes Jewel to Rome, her spiritual retreat, and contemplates seducing her. Also in Rome, there’s Toto, a local cab driver, schemer, kidnapper, and autograph hound who picks up the two women before Beatrice experiences an apparent miracle. Later, Jack, flying into the same city, faces a tragedy of his own in the DaVinci Airport. These are the major pivot points for the plot, and Rosenthal, a very clever writer, molds it all into an addictive story. Her chapters are mostly short with quirky titles (such as “Caroline Parks Car and Walks Back Alone”), and they often act as stand-alone narrative disquisitions. We see the world sometimes through Jack’s eyes, sometimes through Caroline’s, Beatrice’s, or Toto’s, and most rivetingly, through Jewel’s. Caroline behaves monstrously to poor Jewel, but readers will find that they can’t take their eyes away. They’ll also sometimes wonder what’s real and what’s not—and exactly what kind of magic might be at work.
A celebration of the dysfunctional that will keep readers turning pages.Pub Date: Jan. 1, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-937739-92-8
Page Count: 312
Publisher: Deadly Chaps Press
Review Posted Online: Sept. 30, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2017
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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