More melodramatic than taut noir but an engrossing read for fans of historical fiction.
The Jewish daughter of German refugees living in 1941 New York City goes from suspect to detective after her idol, a legendary German actress and outspoken scourge of the Nazis, is murdered.
College student Misia Safran is devastated by the brutal slaying of Stella Berger at the Broadway theater where Safran had a job in the ticket booth. Safran comes under suspicion after a street musician she allowed to enter the theater is seen by witnesses “running from the victim’s dressing room.” That man is Viktor Erdos, who knew Berger since she was a child in Vienna, encouraged her talent and became her lifelong (platonic) confidant before a mysterious falling out. Erdos is one of the memorably drawn characters looming large in Berger’s story. Others include Berger’s husband, Alexander Levary, a director and dandy; Ulla Scholz, Berger’s private secretary (or was she more?); Curtis Wolff, an aspiring lawyer and Safran’s boyfriend; and famed stage and screen actress Lotte Lenya. Each has a story to tell about Berger, each story a piece of the puzzle that will ultimately reveal all about Berger (and her killer). The weakest link in Goldstein’s (Dina’s Lost Tribe, 2010) period novel is Safran herself. For most of the narrative, her role is that of a transcriber of other characters’ versions of events. “I made myself invisible,” she notes at one point. “I withdrew into the background. All ears, I was a fly on the wall.” Only near the end of the book does she become actively involved in the investigation. Dialogue isn’t Goldstein’s strong suit, particularly in the case of two policeman—one German, the other Irish—who initially suspect her: “You mean to say a nice looking girl like you doesn’t have something romantic going on? No fiancé? Are you playing us for fools?” The book’s best passages insightfully deal with the German immigrant experience of the time, the guilt of having loved ones still in Hitler’s Germany—“Why didn’t we force her to leave,” Safran bemoans of her grandmother—and memories of “the magic, lost world of Weimar Belin,” where her parents were musical artists and entertainers.
More melodramatic than taut noir but an engrossing read for fans of historical fiction.Pub Date: Sept. 23, 2014
ISBN: 978-0692246665
Page Count: 284
Publisher: Pierredor Books
Review Posted Online: Dec. 12, 2014
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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