by Charles A. Wells Jr. ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 29, 2011
This amalgamation of “distinctly frivolous” stories lacks a strong selling-point, but you get the feeling early and often...
Wells, a businessman from Middle America, presents his debut collection of short stories.
A financial advisor by day, Wells pens each of his vignettes like a cost-benefit analysis, leaving the now-informed reader to choose: buy in or not. In “Basic Training,” a gawky Wells leaves the halls of the Ivy League for the fields of Louisiana. Knowing he is never to face the trenches of Vietnam, Wells simply struggles to survive an attack from a backwoods ginger giant named “Red” and the scapegoating by an unfriendly drill sergeant. While Wells never loses the candor that earned him these consequences, he develops an apology reflex that absolves him of blame in the stories that follow. Moments like in “Coast to Coast,” however—where his youthful irreverence triumphs—make for deadpan gold: a father-son rescue mission of a baby lamb is celebrated with a lamb dinner. Similarly, Wells abandons his cautious, cumbersome reference to a transgender character as “he/she” for a more reckless, though cringe-worthy, character sketch: “striking from a distance…with a voice like Robert Mitchum’s in a beef commercial.” The reader can’t help but cheer on such humorous interludes once arriving at narratives like “Bowling Green,” which has all the levity of a legal brief. Having ignored the subtextual history of slavery and segregation in this piece, Wells adds the section “Race”—a sort of post-script apology for having painted a Pleasantville with Marges and Earls, Minnies and Charlies and no mention of this substantive theme. Yet again, Wells is forgiven of his grave missteps in stories like “Three Funerals” where the punch-line is a whimsical, albeit purposeless, crafting of a country song. But Wells never has the chance to beg forgiveness for the blunder in his final and namesake story, “Nude Nuns”; in the span of five pages, Wells manages to speak past the foot in his mouth, flagging lesbians by their footwear and defining a hot tub as a “conversation pit with tits.”
This amalgamation of “distinctly frivolous” stories lacks a strong selling-point, but you get the feeling early and often that Wells doesn’t seem to much care whether he makes the sale so long as he gets to make the pitch.Pub Date: Oct. 29, 2011
ISBN: 978-1450794343
Page Count: 258
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Feb. 14, 2012
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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by Hanya Yanagihara ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 10, 2015
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.
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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
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by Michael Crichton ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 7, 1990
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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