An amusing yarn about a student whose love of literature takes him on a dangerous journey.
A Don Quixote fan at Yale University discovers a letter that speaks of hidden treasure in Spain in this thriller.
Michael Porter, a senior literature student at Yale, has become somewhat obsessed with Don Quixote. Michael pores through Cervantes’ novel in both Spanish and English and mopes around campus, often making conversation with his imaginary friend, Boomie. Michael’s girlfriend, Liz Mansfield, a wealthy student interested in finance, is hoping that after graduation Michael will join her and work at Merrill Lynch. As those jobs will be arranged by Liz’s dad, Michael is not overly excited about the prospect; nor is he looking forward to the couple’s trip to St. Thomas. Michael thinks that there are clues in Don Quixote to hidden riches and pretends to be a graduate student to look through some Cervantes documents at the library. He confides in Liz, but she tells him, “The reality is that we’re graduating in two months, and fiction has to take a backseat to life.” She insists, along with professor Colin Edwards, that fiction isn’t real and that the Man of La Mancha has not provided a treasure map. But in the depths of the Beinecke Library, Michael finds an unknown letter, stuck to the back of another, that purports to give the booty’s location. Lost in a literary fantasy, Michael skips the trip to St. Thomas and heads for Spain. Hot on his trail are Liz, the professor, and even Liz’s parents, and Michael soon realizes that he is not the only party in a desperate search for the loot. Halaban’s (The Vermeer Conspiracy, 2015, etc.) novel is a fun and lighthearted adventure that is definitely smart but doesn’t take itself too seriously. Nestled in the comfortable halls of the English Department, Michael’s literary knowledge and his fantasies have become one, and the real-life peril appears in Spain from such eclectic villains as an old forger, knife-wielding monks, and descendants of the Aztecs. The third act, however, goes on for far too long and becomes too crowded with characters. But overall, this is an enjoyable story that offers Gothic elements and archaic intrigue in a search for buried secrets that may or may not exist.
An amusing yarn about a student whose love of literature takes him on a dangerous journey.Pub Date: June 15, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-62901-487-6
Page Count: 252
Publisher: Inkwater Press
Review Posted Online: Oct. 28, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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