A depressingly beautiful portrait of the metropolitan human.
An unnamed narrator experiences the violent tides of a contemporary drug-infused life in New York City.
Living in Williamsburg with a shiba inu named Max, an unnamed and genderless narrator struggles with a series of addictions: romance, drugs, and career. “Me, immortal teenager: always awkward and anxious, forever lonely, constantly desirous of Yes’s from No’s as if I were the deserving exception.” Steeped in both the art world and the advertising industry, the narrator experiences life through a cloud of medicine (“pop two lithium, one Zoloft, and two Klonopin”) and consequently functions as would a ghost haunting his own stomping grounds. The narrator spends time with Pedro, a supremely controversial performance artist who throws themed art parties with names like “Fuck My Mother,” encouraging decadent, uninhibited sexual behavior. The narrator does whatever Pedro requests, including drug cocktails and weeklong benders. The two engage romantically only to realize that their compatibility is just as ephemeral as their high. In the second part, the narrator seems to put a damper on the party scene, this time dating Jacques, an emerging actor who has violent tantrums that only rough sex and emotional outcries can calm. As the narrator attempts to go off meds, their relationship becomes exceptionally codependent, though Jacques is much better at staying away. The comedown affects every aspect of the narrator’s life and induces a series of highly disruptive and murderous episodes. Stoddard (Limiters, 2014, etc.) has created an addictive and intoxicating environment for his readers. The lack of pronouns and overwhelming use of action verbs give the text a depersonalized effervescence that penetrates the reader’s mind with almost no difficulty. As a result, the narrator could be anyone who happens to read this story, but most importantly, the narrator embodies a version of New York that we seldom talk about.
A depressingly beautiful portrait of the metropolitan human.Pub Date: June 19, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-9976432-1-3
Page Count: 188
Publisher: Itna Press
Review Posted Online: April 15, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2018
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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