An accomplished, stirring tribute to a beloved sci-fi series that will captivate fans and newcomers alike.
A faux memoir of Star Trek’s iconic Capt. James T. Kirk that draws on nearly half a century of the franchise’s history.
Star Trek, in all its various forms, has become an indelible part of the American science-fiction landscape. And while its fans may continue to debate which fictional captain was best at his or her job, its first, James Tiberius Kirk, is certainly the best known. This book, an autobiography presented in an in-universe style, covers everything from Kirk’s childhood to his disappearance from the Enterprise (as seen in the 1994 film Star Trek: Generations). There are plenty of nods and winks to the fandom—Goodman, the book’s “editor,” also wrote for Star Trek: Enterprise and penned a Star Trek–themed, Nebula Award–nominated episode of Futurama—but the references never get in the way of the storytelling. If anything, the book is refreshingly accessible; readers won’t need any knowledge of Star Trek in order to enjoy the overall tale. In fact, this book could just as easily serve as a primer to the entire franchise. Its strength lies in how it takes elements from disparate moments over the Star Trek canon and weaves them together in unexpectedly thoughtful and emotionally moving ways. For example, Kirk’s relationship (or lack thereof) with David, the son he had with old flame Dr. Carol Marcus, is a running thread throughout the book; Kirk himself is painted as a child of absent parents who didn’t want to repeat that mistake with his own son but who realized too late that he’d done just that. However, in a surprisingly touching afterword “written” by Spock, the Vulcan points out that Kirk’s regrets over not having a family were unfounded: “His children are the crew members who revered him and carry his legacy now to the limits of known space. His family lives on.”
An accomplished, stirring tribute to a beloved sci-fi series that will captivate fans and newcomers alike.Pub Date: Sept. 8, 2015
ISBN: 9781783297467
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Titan Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 16, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2015
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
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
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