A swell women's page-turner by Chamberlain (Keeper of the Light, 1992, etc.), in which incest survivors overcome their past and proceed through pain, growth, and mystery toward a syrupy happy ending. As children, Claire and Vanessa Harte spent summers with their grandfather, who carved horses for a real carousel in his barn. Claire has only wonderful memories—in sharp contrast to Vanessa, who was raped in the carousel's green chariot and has led a different existence altogether. Thirty years later, Claire and her husband, Jon Mathias, are an enviable supercouple who head a Virginia rehabilitation foundation. Jon has been in a wheelchair since his teens; it was Claire—with her gift for seeing the silver lining in every gray cloud—who turned his life around. Driving home on a snowy night, they see a young woman poised on the edge of the Harper's Ferry bridge. Unable to save her, Claire watches her dive to her death, looking, as the street lamps shine on her snow- covered body, like a falling crystal angel. That image leads Claire to flashbacks. Her perfect world begins to crack, and she begins an affair with the suicide's brother, with whom she feels safe enough to conduct the terrifying investigation into her past. In Seattle, Vanessa has struggled through alcoholism and drug abuse to become a doctor and an activist for molested children. She has a devoted lover and finally feels strong enough to face her perpetrators. Chamberlain manages a lot of plot with great skill, strengthening her story by using devices more common to action thrillers and mysteries and by telling about carousels, adolescent medicine, and how to have sex with the disabled. Unfortunately, her denouement, in a Senate hearing room, in front of a TV camera and a congressional pedophile, becomes suddenly very pat, like a successful summer movie. Nevertheless, ripe storytelling that deserves a prominent place in the beach bag. (Literary Guild alternate selection)
Pub Date: Oct. 12, 1994
ISBN: 0-06-017612-1
Page Count: 416
Publisher: HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1994
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Not as thematically ambitious as Whitehead’s earlier work, but a whole lot of fun to read.
Another surprise from an author who never writes the same novel twice.
Though Whitehead has earned considerable critical acclaim for his earlier work—in particular his debut (The Intuitionist, 1999) and its successor (John Henry Days, 2001)—he’ll likely reach a wider readership with his warmest novel to date. Funniest as well, though there have been flashes of humor throughout his writing. The author blurs the line between fiction and memoir as he recounts the coming-of-age summer of 15-year-old Benji Cooper in the family’s summer retreat of New York’s Sag Harbor. “According to the world, we were the definition of paradox: black boys with beach houses,” writes Whitehead. Caucasians are only an occasional curiosity within this idyll, and parents are mostly absent as well. Each chapter is pretty much a self-contained entity, corresponding to a rite of passage: getting the first job, negotiating the mysteries of the opposite sex. There’s an accident with a BB gun and plenty of episodes of convincing someone older to buy beer, but not much really happens during this particular summer. Yet by the end of it, Benji is well on his way to becoming Ben, and he realizes that he is a different person than when the summer started. He also realizes that this time in his life will eventually live only in memory. There might be some distinctions between Benji and Whitehead, though the novelist also spent his youthful summers in Sag Harbor and was the same age as Benji in 1985, when the novel is set. Yet the first-person narrator has the novelist’s eye for detail, craft of character development and analytical instincts for sharp social commentary.
Not as thematically ambitious as Whitehead’s earlier work, but a whole lot of fun to read.Pub Date: April 28, 2009
ISBN: 978-0-385-52765-1
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2009
BOOK TO SCREEN
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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