A sometimes compelling, if flawed, recovery drama.
In Litwack’s (There Comes a Prophet, 2012) latest novel, a young U.S. Army lieutenant tries to overcome his physical and emotional demons after he’s wounded in Iraq.
Freddie Williams wakes up in a Department of Veterans Affairs hospital in Boston to discover that his leg has been severely damaged by a roadside bomb that killed several other soldiers in his squad. The doctors tell him that he’ll never regain the full use of his limb, and he’ll have to work hard to ever walk again. He’s initially unmotivated to do so, as he’s haunted by memories of his deceased parents and missing brother, but his tough physical therapist, Becky, encourages him. His recovery is long and difficult, and he’s beset by survivor’s guilt. Litwack intersperses the novel’s realistic portions with fantasy chapters that resemble a “World of Warcraft” video game quest; they feature Freddie’s alter ego, a dauphin called Frederick, undertaking a trip that symbolically echoes Freddie’s real-world journey. Unfortunately, these portions may appeal only to readers familiar with such fantasy tropes; to others, they may simply be jarring, as they don’t add necessary elements to the main plot or to the characters’ emotional arcs. The author has a good grasp of the difficulties facing those recovering from severe combat injuries, but his characters seem less psychologically complex as the story progresses. Freddie’s relationship with Becky is particularly predictable and troublesome; she’s depicted as more of a romanticized figure than a fully realized person, and she mainly serves as Freddie’s main motivation to get better. (She even explicitly says that she’s his “reason to make the leap” to move on through life.) Freddie’s progress is linked to his idealized vision of Becky, which lessens the story’s overall emotional resonance.
A sometimes compelling, if flawed, recovery drama.Pub Date: June 3, 2013
ISBN: 978-1771150972
Page Count: 214
Publisher: Double Dragon Publishing
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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