Like a slice of a favorite dessert, thoroughly enjoyable, but gone too soon.
Two peculiar loners bond over the culinary arts in this debut novel.
Fresh out of L’Ecole Gastronomique, the enthusiastic and frizzy-haired Alexandra “Lexie” Haynes scores a coveted gig as a private chef at Frederick House, an isolated, country estate. The catch? Her client, John Frederick, is…particular. A man of ample proportions, he rarely leaves his bedroom, communicates via handwritten notes, and owns every volume of Bon Appétit dating back to 1955. It’s a precarious employment, to say the least. Despite a mishap that nearly gets Lexie fired, a common love of food leads the two eccentrics to forge a tentative friendship. Soon, John Frederick feels brave enough to venture into the kitchen and meet Lexie face to face (“Lexie will be making breakfast. It doesn’t matter that she has cooked breakfast every day for the past few months. Last night, he decided that this would be the first morning he would join her to eat”). But Caleb Mayfield, John Frederick’s business manager and Lexie’s could-be beau, threatens to disrupt the almost-happy home. It’s a jolly, lighthearted narrative, JoJo Moyes’ Me Before You (2012) for foodies. Gastronomic references are sprinkled throughout the prose— Lexie’s eyes are the color of “blueberry sorbet mixed with cream,” and a dashed hope is a soufflé that has collapsed. Novak is kind to her characters, poking gentle fun at their childlike qualities. Accident-prone and insecure, Lexie is an “inveterate talker to walls, trees, and other objects,” whose interactions with other people are punctuated by vivid daydreams. John Frederick’s devotion to filling his stomach is superseded only by his difficulty with coping with change, which is put to the test when medical issues force him to alter his diet. Though it could be mistaken for lazy development, the characters’ simplicity remains endearing. There is also handsome Caleb. Though an effective plot device, John Frederick’s jealousy over Caleb’s acquaintance with Lexie is a stretch, given the brevity of the two’s interactions. Between the straightforward characters and short chapters (at 134 pages, it’s a speedy read), the novel is sometimes reminiscent of a children’s book. An absolutely lovely work, but it’s more appetizer than hearty main dish.
Like a slice of a favorite dessert, thoroughly enjoyable, but gone too soon.Pub Date: Nov. 22, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-63152-103-4
Page Count: 136
Publisher: She Writes Press
Review Posted Online: Nov. 16, 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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