A complex and intriguing novel told in stories.
In Luetkemeyer’s novel, a struggling writer imagines the histories of the people he encounters at a local coffee shop.
Adrian Lomachenko gives up a profitable career as a banker to become a writer, moves to the small town of Jacksonville, Oregon, and decides to spend a year writing one story each month inspired by the people he encounters at the Good Bean Café—specifically, stories about “unlikely and inexplicable” events in each person’s life. Guided by his “muse,” Miranda (a stuffed monkey), Lomachenko often speaks directly to the reader, addressing them by the name Sam as he tells the often implausible, frequently impossible, and always fascinating tales of his neighbors. He recounts the bizarre history of the cafe’s cook, the heir to a fictional kingdom who fled after encountering his doppelgänger; he describes one man’s cross-country journey to buy drugs that turns out to be a drug trip itself; he imagines a conversation with a woman after finding her headstone in the local graveyard; and he shares a horrific tale of spousal murder. The stories are each complete narratives capable of standing alone, but they are also full of connections, with characters, locations, and themes recurring throughout the novel, creating a single unified piece of fiction. The author’s prose is considered and often clever (concluding the cook’s story, Lomachenko acknowledges that “the heir apparent to the Kingdom of Sandu makes a mean breakfast burrito”), though it can occasionally grow ponderous, particularly as the more art-minded characters discuss their interests. The book is dialogue-heavy and omits quotation marks, which may not be to all readers’ taste, but the stories are fundamentally compelling, with solid pacing and coherent plots that keep the reader engaged throughout. The stories paint a vivid picture of Lomachenko’s community, and the framing device is generally effective. The book concludes with Lomachenko’s own story, an outcome that brings together elements of the earlier chapters in often surprising ways, providing a satisfying resolution.
A complex and intriguing novel told in stories.Pub Date: May 1, 2023
ISBN: 9798218186616
Page Count: 230
Publisher: Laughing Buddha Books
Review Posted Online: May 25, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
For devoted Hannah fans in search of a good cry.
The miseries of the Depression and Dust Bowl years shape the destiny of a Texas family.
“Hope is a coin I carry: an American penny, given to me by a man I came to love. There were times in my journey when I felt as if that penny and the hope it represented were the only things that kept me going.” We meet Elsa Wolcott in Dalhart, Texas, in 1921, on the eve of her 25th birthday, and wind up with her in California in 1936 in a saga of almost unrelieved woe. Despised by her shallow parents and sisters for being sickly and unattractive—“too tall, too thin, too pale, too unsure of herself”—Elsa escapes their cruelty when a single night of abandon leads to pregnancy and forced marriage to the son of Italian immigrant farmers. Though she finds some joy working the land, tending the animals, and learning her way around Mama Rose's kitchen, her marriage is never happy, the pleasures of early motherhood are brief, and soon the disastrous droughts of the 1930s drive all the farmers of the area to despair and starvation. Elsa's search for a better life for her children takes them out west to California, where things turn out to be even worse. While she never overcomes her low self-esteem about her looks, Elsa displays an iron core of character and courage as she faces dust storms, floods, hunger riots, homelessness, poverty, the misery of migrant labor, bigotry, union busting, violent goons, and more. The pedantic aims of the novel are hard to ignore as Hannah embodies her history lesson in what feels like a series of sepia-toned postcards depicting melodramatic scenes and clichéd emotions.
For devoted Hannah fans in search of a good cry.Pub Date: Feb. 9, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-2501-7860-2
Page Count: 464
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Nov. 17, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2020
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
