The novel’s final image is so breathtakingly lovely that it’s almost worth the slog through chapters of navel-gazing.
British actress Woof’s ever-so-serious first novel concerns love, loyalty and passion among members of Britain’s creative intelligentsia.
Former dancer Katherine, now 33, feels trapped by her roles as wife to lawyer Adam (underappreciated and long-suffering), mother to little Kieron and part-time music teacher at a school for troubled boys. Ironically she also resents her parents’ inattention. Her father David has always put the Broughton Poetry Foundation, which he founded, runs and raises money for obsessively, ahead of family; her harried mother May has always put his welfare ahead of her three children. After attending a fundraising gala for the Foundation while Adam stays home with Kieron, Katherine begins a tumultuous affair with the poet Stephen Jericho, one of David’s protégés. Married to matter-of-fact Alison with whom he has two children, Stephen is struggling to write a long epic poem about his troubled family history—his grandparents were Polish Jews and he has always felt an outsider. He and Katherine seem to be soul mates. Even when he accepts an invitation for a cushy stint in America and decamps with Alison and the kids, Katherine believes they are meant to be together. Although she supposedly works her crummy job because she and Adam need the money, she finds a way to fly off to America for a tryst, which is cut short when she receives a call that David has cancer. David puts off treatment while trying to raise funding for an ambitious library he’s planned for the Foundation. David is a charismatic monster who has always surrounded himself with handsome young protégés. He is torn about his sexuality, although it is never clear exactly why, since May long ago accepted his sexual proclivities. But he’s hard to hate. A narcissist, David is also capable of acts of genuine grace. Katherine’s self-pity is far harder to care about.
The novel’s final image is so breathtakingly lovely that it’s almost worth the slog through chapters of navel-gazing.Pub Date: May 1, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-393-07658-5
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Norton
Review Posted Online: June 20, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2010
BOOK REVIEW
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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