Addiction is complex; this story is not.
A heroin addict swings from rock bottom to stable in this novella.
Briones’ (Jane Doe: Gutted, 2013) series continues with the brief story of Miranda Anders, a woman whose childhood traumas and unfortunate friendships lead her into a lifetime struggle with heroin addiction. It all begins, of course, with her family: her father, Harry, is an “adrenaline junkie” who spends weeks away on skiing trips, and her plastic surgery– and sex-addicted mother, Virginia, sleeps around in his absence. One of Virginia’s partners includes Ted, Harry’s twin brother, who molests Miranda. Ted dies in a horrific car accident and Virginia commits suicide; and shortly afterward, Miranda steals thousands from her father and falls in with a junkie named Luke. Miranda soon finds herself living beneath an overpass, pickpocketing rich women in fancy restaurants. Doing this work she meets Sully, a proprietor of medieval-themed eateries, who somehow never worries too much about her unexplained past. They fall in love and get married within a paragraph: “The storybook marriage mirrored one of the paintings of Lancelot and Guinevere hanging in the lobby of his medieval restaurant. All perfect, all loving and soon including the addition of a son. Sully had found true happiness with Miranda. She too had found a true love. Except for her secret. Heroin.” Never mind the problematic illusion: Sully supports Miranda through her relapses, finding her good rehab facilities and eventually a good doctor, who diagnoses her with PTSD and a host of other illnesses (including Lyme disease and HIV). Briones, a medical doctor, uses these illnesses to explain Miranda’s behavior, and though her intention to inform trauma survivors of the natures of these conditions is positive, the diagnoses and miraculous cures make for an unsatisfying, too easy conclusion. Briones’ penchant for summarizing long stories over providing concrete scenes, her multiplication of incomplete side characters (such as the hospital’s doctors and homeless outreach volunteers), and her lack of deviation from a typical addiction narrative will invite further dissatisfaction with this story.
Addiction is complex; this story is not.Pub Date: June 7, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-5142-5614-5
Page Count: 98
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Aug. 1, 2015
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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