A poignant and stirring love story that should appeal to fans of historical and fantasy fiction.
An unlikely twist of fate connects a British World War I soldier and a young woman living in modern-day England in this debut novel.
Lt. Robert Lovett is a dedicated British officer fighting in World War I. He is also a talented artist; his paintings depicting the realities of war are selected for a major exhibition. But by August 1916, his future as a soldier and artist is in doubt. While recovering in Coldbrook Hall Military Hospital in Sussex from injuries sustained during the Somme campaign, he is diagnosed with hysterical blindness. More than a century later, in 2017, Louisa Casson is admitted to Coldbrook after a drunken mishap on the Sussex Downs cliffs is mistaken for a suicide attempt. While exploring an abandoned wing of the building, Casson hears a man crying for help and enters Lovett’s room. At first, she believes he may be a patient who thinks he is a World War I soldier or that he is “a product of her anxious, agitated mind.” Eventually, Casson discovers the deserted wing is a portal to the past. Lovett regains his sight and they fall in love, but they are separated when he rejoins his regiment. Desperate to find him, Casson returns to the past as a nurse. When she learns the shocking truth about their fate, she races to find Lovett before they are separated forever. Taylor’s accomplished, genre-bending book succeeds as a historical novel and a beguiling time-travel romance. Casson and Lovett are appealing protagonists whose relationship is the story’s emotional center. They are surrounded by a well-developed supporting cast, including Kerry, Casson’s confidante, and gallery owner Edgar Brocklebank, Lovett’s friend and mentor. The sharply written narrative deftly moves back and forth between the past and present as Casson tries to learn more about the circumstances that led her to Lovett. Their realities are vividly rendered, and their individual tales could stand alone as separate narratives. In particular, Taylor’s depiction of Lovett’s and Casson’s wartime experiences is unflinching but never gratuitous (“If the war didn’t want you, that didn’t mean you’d struck lucky: it meant you had missing limbs or eyes, were paralysed by spinal injuries, or mentally ill with shell shock—or permanently disabled from the inhalation of poison gas. What sort of future awaited men like that?”).
A poignant and stirring love story that should appeal to fans of historical and fantasy fiction.Pub Date: June 26, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-916093-21-8
Page Count: 494
Publisher: The Cameo Press
Review Posted Online: July 5, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2019
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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