An achingly sweet feel-good story of love and redemption of all kinds.
Every generation in a small town has its own drama, and everyone has his or her own way of getting through it.
It’s time to catch up with the good people of Henry Adams, Kansas. In the seventh Blessings installment, Jenkins (Forbidden, 2016, etc.) focuses on TC and Genevieve, who are reinventing themselves in their 60s. Our romantic leads both strive toward new goals: TC to start fresh in a new town and to improve his reading, and Genevieve to become a stronger, truer person, to herself and to others. Their determination is fortified by their adorable day-to-day interactions, whether it is shared silence on a drive or one building up the courage to ask the other to lunch. This little Utopia isn’t without its problems, of course, including lifelong grudges and con artists. And while there is a romance at the center, there are all kinds of relationships here. Nineteen-year-old Eli, having expressed the loss of his mother in the worst ways, works to reconcile with his father. Pastor and child psychologist Paula has to face her own demons after learning that her grandfather, who raised her, has died. And Genevieve's best friend, Marie, has to figure out how to fix their relationship after a self-inflicted isolation. Other names and faces pop in and out, giving us glimpses of past and future stories. Some are deliberately left open, but we know Jenkins will return to tell new ones about the people of Henry Adams. Her style is familiar and cozy, and Jenkins knows how to distinguish her characters’ voices so as not to confuse readers by the whirlwind changes in perspective. She's also good at weaving in back story so new readers will find themselves at home. It's easy to lose hours at a time caught up in this book.
An achingly sweet feel-good story of love and redemption of all kinds.Pub Date: June 28, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-06-241263-8
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: April 12, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2016
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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