A feminist reworking of the Fall, by Simpson (Notes on an Emergency, 1982), that makes the exciting and provocative sound dull and ho-hum. Lilith, in Jewish folklore the first mate of Adam, narrates this story of ``how-it-might-have-been'' if history and theology had been written by women. Certainly no apologist for Lilith—who chose to leave Paradise and roam the world as a demon frightening pregnant women and perpetrating a great deal of nasty and malicious mischief—Simpson suggests that it was not Lucifer but rather Lilith, who, jealous of Eve and of Adam's love for her, tempted Eve. Disguised as a serpent, Lilith shows Eve the apple, then rapes her while she's eating it. After the couple's expulsion from Paradise, Lilith continues to meet Adam, a weak and silly man, on the sly; and when Eve and Lilith both fall pregnant, Adam persuades Lilith not to harm Eve. In exchange, he promises to rear Lilith's child, who is switched with Eve's. Accordingly, the innocent and very decent Eve raises the evil and half-demon Cain, while Lilith does a reluctant and halfhearted job of raising the good and wholly human Isaac. When Cain, jealous of his younger and nicer sibling Abel, murders him, he is punished by God with immortality and a facial disfigurement—the mark of Cain. Adam grows old and increasingly religious, establishing a complete liturgy and rite; Lilith finally tells Isaac of his true birthright and, in an uncharacteristic moment of humility, asks God to let the human and decaying side of Cain die so that he, as a full demon, might join her and Lucifer in hell, where God now imprisons her. And there it ends, as it might have been: Cain freed but Lilith ``forever captive.'' Impeccable though conventional prose and potentially provocative ideas—but all undercut by flat characters and pedestrian storytelling.
Pub Date: June 30, 1991
ISBN: 0-912292-93-8
Page Count: 176
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1991
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
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
APPRECIATIONS
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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