Altogether, a gripping piece of travelogue fiction spiked with an unnerving amount of psychological tension. Just right for...
A nice married couple from Brighton take a year’s sabbatical to Cuba only to have their not-quite-as-nice neighbor from home turn up there as well.
With this third outing, Barr (Baggage, 2002, etc.) further claims the very little niche that she’s carved out for herself. Her novels take a couple of young British girls with an itch to travel and throws them into situations that (1) they’re hideously unprepared for and (2) bring the unspoken tensions in their friendships into sharp and explosive relief—Alex Garland for girls. The tale this time modifies the template slightly by adding another couple into the equation: young professionals David and Libby. Libby has given up her high-stress but remunerative law position to raise their infant son Charlie, leaving her in the housewife’s trap: glad to be around her child but also uncontrollably bored and bitter. Meantime, David has the travel bug and convinces Libby to come with him on a yearlong trip to Havana. The story’s ticking time bomb is their neighbor Maggie, a pale wraith of sadness with a baby fixation so advanced she buys a set of baby monitors just so she can listen in on conversations in David and Libby’s apartment. Maggie (a stripper who tells everyone that she works for American Express) befriends David and Libby just before they leave for Cuba, imagining herself Libby’s best friend and David’s new lover—and then decides to tag along. Once in Havana, Maggie’s plan is spoiled somewhat by the arrival of her leggy, gorgeous friend Yasmin, who has a good grasp of Maggie’s fragile mental state and what she’s capable of. Barr could have quite easily turned all of this into a simple stalker scenario, but fortunately she resists the impulse (most of the time: the baby-in-distress climax might be a little too yuppies-in-peril for many tastes).
Altogether, a gripping piece of travelogue fiction spiked with an unnerving amount of psychological tension. Just right for the backpacker set.Pub Date: April 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-452-28503-8
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Plume
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2004
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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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