A sensitive, if sometimes-uneven, portrayal of the complexities and contradictions of race, class, and sexual orientation in...
The diverse residents of a rapidly gentrifying neighborhood find themselves at a polarizing crossroads when a white driver collides with a young black bicyclist.
The intersection in the title of Windhauser’s (Regret, 2007) novel is not only the location of the accident that sets the action of the plot in motion. It also accurately describes Graduate Hospital, the Philadelphia neighborhood in which each character lives (or flees). Once home to working-class black families, the area now increasingly attracts whites looking to buy cheap and raise values as they make improvements. The white and black residents intersect in Graduate Hospital, but the junction is often not an easy one. When Michael, a gay white professional, becomes involved in an accident with Geoffrey, a black community activist who has returned to the neighborhood his mother worked hard to leave behind, a powder keg of resentment threatens to explode. Immediately after the crash, a black woman named Rose muses: “Something wicked was brewing. Her neighborhood needed her—whatever that might mean—and not just that white driver, whose name she didn’t even know yet.” Shaken, Michael considers leaving the area (“In the past few days, how many times had he felt like bolting?”). The tale explores the intricate issues of race and class that arise as poor people of color find themselves increasingly marginalized by “urban renewal.” Told from a variety of points of view, the narrative builds suspense and delves into complex emotions of loss, grief, anger, and the desire for connection. In places, the author describes racism with subtle precision, as when Geoffrey’s mother, selling the run-down Graduate Hospital home she grew up in, describes the attitude of a white realtor: “He watched where he stepped too much.” But some of the attitudes of the black characters do not ring true. At a meeting about the accident, a black man’s anger is described by a black woman as “infantile,” emerging from a “restricted world view,” with little attention given to the very real racist abuses that may fuel such hostility. Despite this failing, the novel remains engaging and thought-provoking, and the reader grows to genuinely care about the actors in the drama at the intersection.
A sensitive, if sometimes-uneven, portrayal of the complexities and contradictions of race, class, and sexual orientation in a changing urban landscape.Pub Date: Sept. 8, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-61296-751-6
Page Count: 210
Publisher: Black Rose Writing
Review Posted Online: Oct. 12, 2016
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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