A mildly suspenseful, elegiac first novel of a Japanese family tragedy in a Hawaiian sugarcane plantation town: how an elder brother's accidental death haunts the middle son's life for the next 20 years. Author Iida, who lives on Maui, opens her story in the present day as Spencer Fujii comes on one of his regular visits to his now- dying widowed mother—a woman who has lived her entire life on ``Japanese row'' in Wainoa, Maui, one of many isolated communities devoted to planting and harvesting sugarcane. Surrounded by endless fields, working from cradle to grave, the Japanese and other ethnic worker groups (Filipino, Chinese, Portuguese, Korean, all supervised by whites) had little opportunity for assimilation and followed the customs of their homelands overseas. For the Fujiis, this obedience generates two events that will warp the life of Spencer, the middle son. First, his father, an eldest son, forces his wife to give up her newborn third son to his younger brother's family—an event witnessed in all its emotional awfulness by Spencer and his elder brother, Taizo (``At the price of a baby's love, the older brother was sacrificing for the younger. Uncle and Auntie would no longer be childless''); then, envious of Taizo's assumption of leadership as the eldest son, Spencer begins provoking his brother to similar acts of masochistic selflessness, culminating in an incident at a reservoir in which Taizo drowns. The simplicity of the pidgin dialect can give poignancy to these moments: ``Taizo never like water,'' their father says. ``Why he went inside?'' Spencer: ``Wanted for go.'' Eventually, the guilt drives Spencer away, to Vietnam, to Honolulu, to marriage to a white woman, until, on his final visit back home, he realizes his entire life has been spent denying a secret that everybody already knew—and forgave. Iida piles a lot onto a frail narrative structure, but her skill at balancing rhythmic pidgin with well-wrought description creates a small gem about a fascinating and strongly traditional way of life, now vanishing.
Pub Date: March 31, 1996
ISBN: 1-56512-119-8
Page Count: 238
Publisher: Algonquin
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1996
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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