A dark semiautobiographical first novel in which action flourishes at the expense of character development.
The father’s a killer, the mother’s an addict, and the son’s just plain trapped in this blunt-force account of an Appalachian family.
Charlie McNeely controls the lucrative crystal meth business in his neck of the woods; his estranged wife, Laura, is one of his customers. The work involves killing; real men kill, and the rest are pussies, according to Charlie. Having cops on his payroll provides protection. With bad McNeely blood in his veins, the self-loathing 18-year-old Jacob sees himself as trash. Two years earlier, he broke up with his childhood sweetheart, Maggie, not wanting to drag her into the abyss. Now Jacob is facing a manhood test Daddy has set up. (As narrator, he calls his parents Daddy and Mama.) Robbie Douglas, an employee, has snitched and must be disposed of. In the deep-woods shack, he finds the Cabe brothers, also employees, have Robbie tied up and bleeding. The brothers splash him with sulfuric acid and leave him for dead on the mountainside. It was a sloppy job. Robbie is found, unconscious but alive. Now it’s the Cabes’ turn. Big Daddy beats them bloody, shoots them and has Jacob help him dump them in the lake. Jacob is now accessory to two, maybe three murders, and his situation becomes even more dire when he discovers his blood-soaked Mama, who has shot herself at his Daddy’s urging. Still, there’s a glimmer of hope when Maggie, who is a Good Woman, returns to him, saying “You’re the strongest man I know.” Might Jacob overcome his fatalism? Joy struggles with that, just as he struggles to give complexity to that dead-eyed evildoer of a father, but he ultimately finds it simplest to obey his first commandment: Shed blood.
A dark semiautobiographical first novel in which action flourishes at the expense of character development.Pub Date: March 3, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-399-17277-9
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PROFILES
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
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
