A heavy dose of schadenfreude: This very slick black comedy traces the gnarled roots of a family tree with an equal measure...
In a kind of literary Hall of Mirrors set in post-communist Berlin, second-novelist Bailey (Idioglossia, not reviewed) portrays two brothers who have come together reluctantly and without enthusiasm to make peace after a near-lifetime of deception and jealousy.
Erich Brandt is no newcomer to Berlin, but he enjoyed the isolation of the city before The Wall came down and can’t quite acclimate himself to the go-go atmosphere of the new order. A painter of some note but no success, Erich makes his living as the proprietor of an art gallery/café and has more or less washed his hands of any cultural pretensions. Divorced, successful, and middle-aged, he is not prepared for the shock of his brother Max’s attempt at suicide. A photographer and womanizer, Max has lived in London for many years and has always served as something of a reproach to Erich, who secretly envies Max simultaneously for his success and for his lack of care over it. After Max tries to kill himself, Erich brings him back to Berlin to stay with him and sets about the awkward task of learning to talk to a brother he’d abandoned many years before. There are old wounds and new: Max slept with Erich’s then-wife, Ursula, many years ago, and Erich is now embarrassed by the trashy success of his and Ursula’s daughter Nina (a kind of German Karen Finley who strips and copulates in public). Max wanders through his old hometown (now unrecognizable to him) like a drunken ghost and manages to uncover the fundamental deceptions that surround nearly every member and friend of his family. This proves a nice diversion—until Max discovers that some deceptions of his own are up for examination as well.
A heavy dose of schadenfreude: This very slick black comedy traces the gnarled roots of a family tree with an equal measure of affection and disgust.Pub Date: Nov. 15, 2004
ISBN: 0-552-99863-X
Page Count: 393
Publisher: Black Swan
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2004
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
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.
A violent surfacing of adolescence (which has little in common with Tarkington's earlier, broadly comic, Seventeen) has a compulsive impact.
"Nobody big except me" is the dream world of Holden Caulfield and his first person story is down to the basic, drab English of the pre-collegiate. For Holden is now being bounced from fancy prep, and, after a vicious evening with hall- and roommates, heads for New York to try to keep his latest failure from his parents. He tries to have a wild evening (all he does is pay the check), is terrorized by the hotel elevator man and his on-call whore, has a date with a girl he likes—and hates, sees his 10 year old sister, Phoebe. He also visits a sympathetic English teacher after trying on a drunken session, and when he keeps his date with Phoebe, who turns up with her suitcase to join him on his flight, he heads home to a hospital siege. This is tender and true, and impossible, in its picture of the old hells of young boys, the lonesomeness and tentative attempts to be mature and secure, the awful block between youth and being grown-up, the fright and sickness that humans and their behavior cause the challenging, the dramatization of the big bang. It is a sorry little worm's view of the off-beat of adult pressure, of contemporary strictures and conformity, of sentiment….
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.Pub Date: June 15, 1951
ISBN: 0316769177
Page Count: -
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1951
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