An affecting account of determined, courageous responses to global, persistent racism.
Using the year 1896 to tie the themes of racism, deceit, and brutality across continents, first-time author Davis takes the reader from the failed Italian invasion of Ethiopia to post-Reconstruction conditions in America.
The novel begins and ends with Sara, an Ethiopian woman separated from her husband and children by some Sudanese slave traders during the Italian-Ethiopian conflict. She manages to escape and make her way home, saving a wounded Italian soldier in the process—a testament to her forgiveness as well as her grit. Davis describes the Italian invasion of Ethiopia from the invaders’ and defenders’ perspectives, focusing on the Italian leaders’ ineptitude and intrigues among the Ethiopians, culminating in the Italians’ stunning defeat at Adwa. Elsewhere, Davis chronicles the uprising of the Ndebele and Shona in southern Africa. Cecil Rhodes and British colonists triumph over them, forcing all into an unfavorable peace treaty and taking most of their land. In another section, Davis tells the story of Curtis, a black man from Alabama who migrates north to stay with his mother in New York. Disillusioned with city life and northern racism, he returns to the South, only to be lynched, mutilated, and burned after he’s wrongly accused of raping a white woman. While the plot is powerful, the writing can be uneven. The American section is artfully and subtly written, but the description of the Ethiopian invasion from the perspective of the Italian leaders uses stiff dialogue that serves too often as creaky exposition (“Ras Mikael joined forces with the emperor when the emperor reached Wello but that was expected since he is the emperor’s son-in-law. Other leaders in the south and the west have joined him at Lake Ashangi also”). But Davis delivers a gut-wrenching account of the hardships endured by Curtis and gives a convincing account of pervasive, irrational racism moving like a toxic cloud from one continent to another. “We are all niggers to them,” Zansi, an Ndebele warrior, explains to Rhodes’ envoy.
An affecting account of determined, courageous responses to global, persistent racism.Pub Date: April 3, 2007
ISBN: 978-1-60047-403-3
Page Count: 260
Publisher: Wasteland Press
Review Posted Online: Sept. 19, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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