A novel with many positive attributes but not enough conflict to justify its length.
In Wall’s debut novel, a young man survives a hurricane and moves to Massachusetts to plot a new future for himself.
When Hurricane Katrina hits New Orleans, Jim Scoresby refuses to evacuate and stays behind to look after his grandfather’s house. He does so in the company of his friend, elderly jazz musician Freddy Beasley. Right before the hurricane, Jim had a confrontation with his father, who feared that Jim, who’s nearing 30, would never amount to anything. After Katrina, Jim ends up moving to Boston, where he finds success selling investments at the firm of Henretty & Henretty. There, he comes to the attention of its chief executive, Commodore Walter Henretty, and even begins to date the boss’s daughter, Maureen. When Walter decides to put him in charge of his yacht brokerage business on Cape Cod, Jim jumps at the chance but finds that the spoiled Maureen is unhappy; she wants him to stay with her in Boston. All the while, Jim misses New Orleans and wonders if he’ll ever move back home or if he’ll make a new life for himself in New England. Things come to a head when Jim agrees to accompany Walter for a test drive of his recently overhauled schooner, and an encounter with a white squall leads to tragedy. Wall delivers a full-blooded, old-fashioned novel about love, ambition and money that’s reminiscent of the works of Richard Powell, Vance Bourjaily, James Gould Cozzens and other midcentury American authors. From Boston’s Beacon Hill to New Orleans’ Frenchman Street, the book does an excellent job of evoking a sense of place and contains any number of memorable scenes, particularly the two storms that bookend the story. Even though, as a character, Jim seems a little too good to be true, the author surrounds him with an engaging cast of New England types. Unfortunately, at over 400 pages, the narrative seems somewhat padded, and even the most patient readers will grow tired of its many digressions.
A novel with many positive attributes but not enough conflict to justify its length.Pub Date: Aug. 26, 2014
ISBN: 978-1938749209
Page Count: 436
Publisher: Violet Crown Publishers
Review Posted Online: Dec. 2, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2015
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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