L.I.E.

Name: L.I.E.
Author: David Hollander
ISBN: 0-375-50443-5

by David Hollander ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 1, 2000

One finishes L.I.E. both frustrated by its vagueness and, paradoxically, confident that its talented author is capable of...

bookshelf

Formal innovations are the most interesting features of this rangy first novel, which assembles ten interrelated stories and a brief coda to trace the uneasy maturing of a Long Island teenager.

“L.I.E.” stands for Long Island Expressway, the thoroughfare that bisects the suburban territory inhabited by Harlan Kessler, who's 15 in 1985, the year of the earliest episodes here. Over the next five years, we observe him as an importunate teenager desperate to lose his virginity, high-school jock and amateur rock musician, I.R.S. clerk, and, finally, to his amazement and gratitude, in love with and loved by a beautiful, warmhearted girl named Sarah. Hollander repeatedly employs series of brief parallel scenes juxtaposing various characters' apparently distinct, eventually interconnected actions—most notably in “Dog = God,” the story of a memorable Halloween when Harlan and his then girlfriend almost make love, his parents quarrel at a party and return home unexpectedly, and the Kesslers' beloved mutt Pepper wheezes through his last hours on earth. Other chapters focus on a wild teen party that climaxes with a supposed UFO sighting; a raucous “Sunday Dinner” presented as a one-act play that reimagines Kessler family dynamics as Dickens's A Christmas Carol, TV’s The Honeymooners, and several Beatles songs; and a climactic flurry of "Quotations" from family and friends speculating on the fate of the disappeared Harlan (who either is or isn't still with Sarah and has or hasn't committed suicide). It's a bumpy ride of a book, often sharply observed and intriguing; just as often, flawed by its protagonist's elusive (indeed obscured) personality. We end up not knowing Harlan Kessler very much better at the end of the story than we did at its beginning; if Hollander intended this, the reader can only wonder why.

One finishes L.I.E. both frustrated by its vagueness and, paradoxically, confident that its talented author is capable of better work.

Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2000

ISBN: 0-375-50443-5

Page Count: 208

Publisher: Villard

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2000

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

bookshelf

THE CATCHER IN THE RYE

by J.D. Salinger ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 15, 1951

A strict report, worthy of sympathy.

bookshelf

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

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

- SEEN & HEARD
Salinger Focus of NYPL Exhibit

- SEEN & HEARD
NYC Mayoral Candidates Name Favorite Gotham Books

- APPRECIATIONS
Holden Caulfield: Forever Young

bookshelf

JURASSIC PARK

by Michael Crichton ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 7, 1990

bookshelf

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.