The Sachertorte romances by Ibbotson (Madensky Square, 1988, etc.) have resisted a firm categorization. The narration is too witty and waggish for the average lathering romance, and the plots too drenchingly sweet and contrived for a Fay Weldon-style satire or a Malcolm Macdonald chatty comedy. Here, the publishers have wisely allowed the author her own directive for her work: ``for the intelligent woman with the flu.'' Just so. Ibbotson's latest offering concerns the career of clever, enormously learned, and bouncy Ruth Berger, daughter of an eminent zoology professor and an excessively good mother whose house in Vienna also shelters an anthropologist aunt, alarmingly clumsy in all but her seminal work on obscure tribes, and a sad little uncle with a romantic past. Also, on the eve of WW II, another of the Bergers' summer visitors is Quinton Somerville, a young Englishman, a comer in paleontology, and the brilliant boy pianist Heini Radek. During the scholars' vacation in the mountains, Quin loves the Bergers, and the child Ruth adores just slightly older Heini. Eight years later, after the Nazis grab Vienna, Quin returns and, via a ``paper'' marriage to Ruth, rescues her so that she can join her family in a seedy section of London. The refugee colony makes do in tacky digs while Ruth, keeping secret the marriage to Quin, anxiously awaits the arrival of her fiancÇ Heini from Hungary. Meanwhile, she attends the college where Quin is the stellar lecturer, and with a group of students sees for the first time the Northumberland homestead where reigns Quin's fierce spinster aunt. Among Ruth's new acquaintances: dim-to-devoted schoolmates; dazed intelligentsia and an eccentric or two soldiering on; and, spearheading a sizable contingent plotting to wed Quin, a upper- caste student of terrifying perfection and the mien of a Roman senator. There will be misunderstandings, crossed paths—and, of course, happy endings. A bedtable joy.
Pub Date: Aug. 16, 1993
ISBN: 0-312-09338-1
Page Count: 336
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 1993
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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