A silly, enjoyable romance involving entrapment, shopping sprees, crevasses, and ugly hiking boots.
In Chisholm and Kim’s (K-Town Confidential, 2017) romance, a high-powered lawyer puts a plan into motion to test his wife’s fidelity.
When Mark Bell discovers an old trove of nude photographs and sex tapes featuring his wife of 10 years, Kat Connor, with various men, he becomes obsessed with testing her loyalty to him. Soon afterward, Finn Maus, a handsome German mountain infantryman with eyes the “color of the Adriatic,” shows up in Mark’s law office. His best friend, Gunnar Becker, has been accused of sexual assault by Lina Valentina, “Disney’s sweetheart of the moment” whose partying during her free time has become “a problem” for Disney. Mark agrees to do the case pro bono—if Finn will fly to a picturesque Canadian ski resort and attempt to seduce Kat. But what Mark doesn’t know is that Kat secretly finds him annoying, particularly when it comes to sex. Sending a young, handsome seducer might not turn out the way he envisions—particularly when Finn has been outfitted in the finest clothing, such as a “Loro Piana cashmere sports jacket in a very restrained plaid,” handpicked by Mark during a Neiman Marcus shopping spree. The third-person narrative flits between different characters’ perspectives, giving readers insights that other characters don’t have, which ruins some surprises. However, with minor characters named Sesami Lee and Veronica Vamp, this romance sometimes veers into the ludicrous—and it’s all the better for it. Although the plotline is mostly predictable, some lines are ridiculous enough to make it fun: “I’m kind of like jazz,” says Finn. “I flow like the river and respond, she curves like the river, this way and that way.” At one point on his seduction trip, Finn lures Kat away from a crowd, only to fall into a hole in the ice himself, which seems wonderfully tragicomic.
A silly, enjoyable romance involving entrapment, shopping sprees, crevasses, and ugly hiking boots.Pub Date: Jan. 18, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-68433-012-6
Page Count: 218
Publisher: Black Rose Writing
Review Posted Online: April 16, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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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