The stifling humidity of the prose will push a lot of readers out of this kitchen.
Take a batch of characters, toss them into one cooking class, glaze heavily with folk wisdom.
Lillian, the Pacific Northwest restaurant owner and teacher of the Monday night school of the book’s title, is part matchmaker, part Buddhist priest, part Alice Waters. She specializes in organic ingredients and a slow-cooking, who-needs-recipes style, an approach she perfected as a child when her dad ran off and her mother retreated into books. Cooking, for her, is a pathway to healing, and conveniently enough her latest group of students could each use some help. Among them are Chloe, a young woman who’s klutzy and in a bad relationship; Tom, who’s mourning the death of his wife; Claire, a mom who fears motherhood is erasing her identity; Ian, a computer engineer who’s incapable even of cooking a pot of rice; and Carl and Helen, an older couple who’ve gotten past a history of infidelity. Together they reminisce, vent and learn their way around crab dishes, cakes and Thanksgiving dinners, even though Lillian’s stingy about instructions and the entrees aren’t exactly beginners’ fare. Bauermeister capably evokes the sensual pleasures of a busy kitchen, but her story is thickly sentimental, all smoothed edges and earnest dialogue. For instance, one character introduces herself, ridiculously, by saying, “before you start cooking with me, I should tell you, I am losing my way, these days.” No worries: Lillian will assuredly give her and the rest of the class some direction, and Bauermeister guides each individual’s story along with a pitiless blitzkrieg of soft-focus similes and metaphors—each action and detail persistently equates to a dancing child, a happy puppy, a down comforter, a butterfly or a flower. To her credit, the author pulls off a tough trick of juggling an assortment of characters and making each feel lived-in and human. But as she inevitably guides each toward bliss, the book feels less empathetic and more hokey and melodramatic.
The stifling humidity of the prose will push a lot of readers out of this kitchen.Pub Date: Jan. 1, 2009
ISBN: 978-0-399-15543-7
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2008
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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