A Los Angeles scientist hits upon a TOE (``Theory of Everything'') at the very moment her family needs her most—in a witty and sophisticated 90's-style drama by the poet and author of Dear Digby (1989). Eccentric, independent Esme Charbonneau has experienced the pleasures of intellectual success as a gifted child, a Harvard undergraduate, and the protÇgÇ of renowned chemist Kendall Quandahl. But since she's moved to L.A. to teach organic chemistry and splice genes at the male-dominated University of Greater California, Esme's satisfactions have steadily lessened. Having adjusted to the California culture, married a TV technical director who moonlights unsuccessfully as a stand-up comedian, and given birth to a daughter whose odd, metaphoric use of language causes doctors to suspect mental illness, Esme finds herself struggling in vain against what looks like mediocrity in her career, in her marriage, and as a mother. On top of this, Esme's abstract mind, which tends to dwell on such things as the chemical composition of lipstick when she's supposed to be interacting with another human being, has been distracted lately by hints of a connection uniting the concept of molecular ``handedness'' with the Big Bang—a sort of universal theory that she believes could make her famous. But the timing is all wrong: Esme's intellectual snobbery has caused a frat-like student to scheme against her; her insensitivity has caused her husband to move out; and her physical absence has left her beloved daughter prey to those who want to help but cannot understand her. As Esme reaches a climax in her theorizing, her personal life reaches a climax of disaster and life becomes a frantic juggling act—before she pins down her theory and discovers the tragic ways in which her daughter's strange behavior and her own forgotten past are intertwined. A sparkling, invigorating story, though the author's obvious preference for brilliant Esme over her doltish colleagues and stammering husband detracts from its effect.
Pub Date: Feb. 1, 1993
ISBN: 0-670-84047-5
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 1992
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.
A violent surfacing of adolescence (which has little in common with Tarkington's earlier, broadly comic, Seventeen) has a compulsive impact.
"Nobody big except me" is the dream world of Holden Caulfield and his first person story is down to the basic, drab English of the pre-collegiate. For Holden is now being bounced from fancy prep, and, after a vicious evening with hall- and roommates, heads for New York to try to keep his latest failure from his parents. He tries to have a wild evening (all he does is pay the check), is terrorized by the hotel elevator man and his on-call whore, has a date with a girl he likes—and hates, sees his 10 year old sister, Phoebe. He also visits a sympathetic English teacher after trying on a drunken session, and when he keeps his date with Phoebe, who turns up with her suitcase to join him on his flight, he heads home to a hospital siege. This is tender and true, and impossible, in its picture of the old hells of young boys, the lonesomeness and tentative attempts to be mature and secure, the awful block between youth and being grown-up, the fright and sickness that humans and their behavior cause the challenging, the dramatization of the big bang. It is a sorry little worm's view of the off-beat of adult pressure, of contemporary strictures and conformity, of sentiment….
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.Pub Date: June 15, 1951
ISBN: 0316769177
Page Count: -
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1951
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
APPRECIATIONS
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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