Winning and intensely moving, if wildly, romantically far-fetched.
An impressive first by a Hollywood insider (the wife of director Ron Howard) explores the deeply hostile reception two American sisters receive when they penetrate the tightly patriarchal society of Muslim culture.
Accustomed, in the 1990s, to traveling periodically to India and northern areas of Kashmir to dicker with Muslim merchants for the best deals on merchandise for their growing California import-export company, Christine and Liz Shepherd don’t often feel intimidated moving among exotic cultures. Their American citizenship and dollars protect them, until Liz, the elder, and her driver venture out alone for one last buying stop at the small Hindu village of Padamthala, which is subsequently bombed by the Sunni Muslim terrorist group led by the fanatic Farrukh Ahmed—and Liz is missing or presumed dead. Christine, whose father, long deceased, was a chemical engineer who taught her to shoot a gun, sets out on a harebrained scheme to find her sister, coached via cell phone by her father’s best friend and special agent to the FBI, Cloid Dale. Alarmed by hints of a “flesh trade,” Christine accepts the escort of a low-level Indian government employee, Nikhil, who ends up raping her in the desert and triggering a landmine; she takes refuge with a sympathetic Pakistani family, the Javids, who agree, against their better judgment, to drive her into the larger town of Peshawar: Christine is resolved to find the notorious terrorist and reclaim her sister, despite the increasingly hateful treatment she receives at the hands of the men. Howard Crew’s narrative erupts in violence at every stage of Christine’s journey, from rape to gun smuggling to bloody ambushes by vengeful tribes. The plausibility of her story relies on the generous personal detail the author brings to the landscape and characters, and especially to the ancient family customs and protocol of the people Christine encounters along the way.
Winning and intensely moving, if wildly, romantically far-fetched.Pub Date: April 1, 2005
ISBN: 0-312-32648-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2005
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
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
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