A somewhat self-indulgent and contrived mid-life crisis set at a pre-Colombian dig allows novelist and amateur archeologist Peters (The Incas, 1991, etc.) to engage in some historical speculation while strutting his stuff. Harp Yates, a minor novelist in his mid-30s and currently unemployed, has never been one to ``play it safe'': In college he fled to Canada to avoid the draft. But temporarily in suburban Maryland where sociologist wife Caroline is finally on the tenure- track, Harp is suffering from writer's block—a condition that makes him steal lawn ornaments from his neighbors, including a large green elf, because it gives him the same rush he used to get from writing. But Caroline, who has her own career problems, clearly thinks Harp's ``elf-theft'' is indicative of his imminent deterioration and when Harp's best friend calls and suggests that Harp join him at a dig in Mexico, Caroline urges him to accept: ``It might get you going on another book, and...definitely keep you off our neighbor's lawns and out of jail.'' Which it indeed does, but not before Harp has suffered revitalizing trials of the spirit and the flesh as he helps the team excavate the site of a city for whom a ritualized ball game with an enemy may have been a substitute for war. There, in the remote Mexican jungle near the Guatemalan border, Harp confronts an autocratic dig-leader, makes a major find, resists a beautiful archeologist, and is injured in an encounter with the Guatemalan army, which is pursuing a destitute tribe of Indians. Back home, Caroline continues to worry about Harp and her job prospects, but Harp returns renewed, all set to write, and Caroline gets the job and the house she wants. End of crisis. Neither a major dig, nor a major read. Even the archeology is ho-hum.
Pub Date: March 1, 1995
ISBN: 0-679-43306-6
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1995
BOOK REVIEW
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
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
APPRECIATIONS
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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