An intelligent dramatization of an important debate in health care policy, hampered by a baffling conclusion.
In this political thriller, battle lines between family and friends are drawn over a new pharmaceutical bill floated in Congress.
Jamie Steiner grew up in Louisville, Kentucky, and anguished over his mother’s debilitating illness, one for which no relief appeared to be in sight. He decided to become a scientist, motivated to discover a cure for what ailed her; earned a Ph.D. in chemistry; and landed a job at Rauscher Pharmaceuticals. Jamie was able to uncover a causal link between his mother’s exposure to asbestos and her lung disease, and was instrumental in devising a cure for it. But now his employer repeatedly inflates the price of the drug and blocks the development of a new, considerably less expensive alternative. Meanwhile, two of his childhood friends, Earl and Herman Metzger, are at loggerheads over the regulation of the pharmaceutical industry, an ideological contest skillfully portrayed by Stemmle (Geezer Sex!: A Love Story, 2014). Earl is a congressman who advocates largely unregulated markets and Herman is a bureaucrat at the Food and Drug Administration. Further complicating matters, Earl marries Isabel, the daughter of John Tilson Rauscher, the CEO of Rauscher Pharmaceuticals, who contributes generously to his re-election campaigns and bankrolls his comfortable style of living. Furthermore, one of Earl and Herman’s younger brothers is ill due to asbestos exposure, and the Metzger family quietly struggles to pay for his health care. The mounting conflict crescendos when Earl, Herman, and Jamie all are called to testify at a congressional hearing in advance of a major vote on a bill that introduces new regulations of the pharmaceutical industry. Stemmle writes with impressive self-assurance about both politics and science, ably capturing the potential tug of wars within each and between the two. With considerable nuance, he demonstrates the many ways in which the personal overlays the political, pitting emotion against principle. But the author betrays the novel’s admirable evenhandedness when he gratuitously transforms John into a gangster who cruelly pimps out Isabel for political gain. The drama of the plot’s denouement is undermined by its bewildering implausibility, an ending so cartoonish that it seems written by another, less sophisticated writer.
An intelligent dramatization of an important debate in health care policy, hampered by a baffling conclusion.Pub Date: Sept. 29, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-5481-4415-9
Page Count: 324
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Nov. 28, 2017
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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