An often engaging thriller that transcends its standard post-apocalyptic setup.
In this debut sci-fi thriller, two English brothers encounter a desolate New York City littered with corpses and teeming with crazed killers.
Manchester, England, natives Harry and Jack cut their New York sightseeing plans short when their plane lands in the apparently abandoned John F. Kennedy International Airport. The brothers, along with fellow passenger Bernie and his wife, Linda, volunteer to check the terminal, where they discover multiple corpses. Soon, a group of seemingly demented people tries to kill them. Several of the attackers—the brothers simply call them “killers”—appear to have turned against one another before the plane’s arrival. Soon the brothers and their allies are on the hunt for more survivors and for information about a possible global catastrophe. The Wearmouths’ vision of an apocalyptic New York is, at least initially, standard fare: large, deserted areas; piles of dead bodies; and main characters with no clue about what’s happening. However, the authors’ ingenuity soon separates their story from the rest of the pack, as it features enemies who aren’t as easy to spot as infected zombies—which makes it impossible for the heroes to trust even an elderly woman. The killers also have the intriguing ability to manipulate potential victims into traps. As the story progresses, the brothers meet other survivors, such as Lea—who, in a clever use of modern communication, initially communicates with Jack via Twitter—and they also lose some companions. The story eventually hits a relative standstill, however, once the group holes up in the city. Readers learn little about the characters or their situations; instead, the heroes simply fight more killers, until they finally opt for a more isolated shelter. The book’s final act delivers the goods, however, explaining the reasons for the killers’ bizarre behavior and why the airplane’s passengers and crew were unaffected. Harry and Jack’s nationality gives the book a distinctive British flair—they often call people “mates,” for example—but it sometimes bleeds too much into the rest of the narrative, as when American characters refer to a cell phone as a “mobile.” The coda provides a fitting denouement, and leaves the ending open to readers’ interpretations.
An often engaging thriller that transcends its standard post-apocalyptic setup.Pub Date: Aug. 15, 2013
ISBN: 978-1491296523
Page Count: 266
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Sept. 26, 2013
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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