Dark, brilliant and disturbing. Let’s hope this first U.S. publication for Chilean novelist Franz will be followed by many...
What happened in a provincial town during the early days of the Pinochet regime.
Twenty years after the coup that toppled Salvador Allende’s government, Laura Larco returns to Pampa Hundida. A young judge there in 1973 when the soldiers rolled in, Laura fled abroad a few months later. Now she has come home to resume her judicial post, carrying in her briefcase a manuscript written in response to her daughter Claudia’s angry question, “Where were you, Mamá, when all those horrible things were taking place in your city?” Born in Berlin, Claudia has come to Chile “to serve justice” and make sure wrongdoers are punished in the restored democracy. But guilt and innocence are not easily defined, we see as Franz interweaves the events that unfold following Laura’s return with her memories of the town’s ordeal in 1973. The brutal Major Cáceres relied on the terrified complicity of Pampa Hundida’s authorities as he executed political prisoners in a camp on the outskirts of town, and he established an unnerving bond with Laura, fearfully attracted to him from the moment she stormed into the church where he was praying to denounce his violations of the law. Past and present narratives build to a joint climax, as Laura learns of the terrible intimacy between a torturer and his victim, as well as the willingness of ordinary people to benefit from evil deeds. Revelations of Cáceres’ crimes threaten to discredit the annual religious fiesta that by 1993 is the primary source of Pampa Hundida’s economic well-being. Wouldn’t it be better, the nervous mayor asks Laura, just to let old wounds heal? By contrast Cáceres, disfigured and half-insane, looks to her to judge him. The course of action she chooses is as unpredictable as everything else in Franz’s superbly plotted novel, which invokes the ancient gods of Chile’s indigenous people, as well as the eternal opposition between humanity’s Apollonian and Dionysian instincts, to remind us that all judgments are partial and compromised.
Dark, brilliant and disturbing. Let’s hope this first U.S. publication for Chilean novelist Franz will be followed by many more.Pub Date: June 17, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-929701-94-3
Page Count: 375
Publisher: McPherson & Company
Review Posted Online: April 5, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2011
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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