A swift look at the internal struggles of one particularly unbalanced artist.
From debut author McEldowney comes a novel about the internal struggles of a young artist.
When readers first meet the narrator, a visual artist who remains nameless, he’s having a hard time sleeping in his apartment: “As I lay here awake, I watch the shadows dart from corner to corner, trying to hide from my periphery.” Seeking solace at the local laundromat, he finds an attractive girl with whom he manages to strike up a conversation, despite the fact that he’s “not exactly good with women, or even people for that matter.” As their casual chat opens the door to a date, things seem to be going reasonably well for the narrator. Back at his apartment, a talking jackalope mask named Jack offers him life advice (such as, “Enjoying yourself is important and accepting the oddities around you can be a good step in broadening your mind’s horizons and perspective”), and although the narrator continues to battle sleep-related issues, he’s still able to complete an art project. Jack provides a source of positive thinking, but a creeping force known as the Entity provides just the opposite: “Dark and deep, crackling and warped, detractive in tone,” it enjoys nothing more than filling the narrator with dismay. Will the narrator, along with Jack the mask, be able to salvage his creativity from such discord? And what of that laundromat girl with her eyes of “crystal blue stained glass”? Brief at just over 100 pages, this tale of angst and confusion moves along quickly. Some details, such as who orders what on restaurant dates (“I think I’m going to get the manicotti,” the girl explains), do little for the story’s progress. However, these tidbits fade away quickly in the prevailing dust storm of malcontent. Overall, the book offers an empathetic journey for creative types who can relate to the narrator’s moments of doubt and self-criticism; his quest is clearly fantastical, though not improbable. Although portions of the novel may strike some readers as melodramatic (such as when images flash in the narrator’s mind of “dark, macabre things, faces, skulls and webs gnarled all in blackness”), the theme of frustration is well-played.
A swift look at the internal struggles of one particularly unbalanced artist.Pub Date: April 13, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-5117-8582-2
Page Count: 118
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Nov. 23, 2015
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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