A spiritually infused homage to Australia’s diverse heritage hampered by an episodic structure.
This sequel continues the saga of the daughter of an Irish miner and an Aborigine woman in Australia.
It is 2015 and 12-year-old Lisa Maree is enjoying frolicking through the acreage of her grandparents’ Hillrock property outside the small city of Gympie in Queensland, accompanied by their border collie, Max. Hugging him, she feels Max shiver just before she hears a mournful wail: “Heartbreakingly intense, it rose and fell on the wind. It was a cry of human grief, but there was also longing and a drawn-out sigh—almost like a question.” Returning to the house, Lisa displays a pure white stone she found just before hearing the wail. Her grandmother Grace Daniels explains it is a Limga, “the Aboriginal word for any solid rock which had eternal properties.” It is on this mystical note that Roots (Marranga-Limga, 2015, etc.) sets her protagonists on a search into their long-forgotten family lineage, finally reaching back to the 1869 birth of Nika O’Reilly on the banks of the Mary River. Lisa’s Hillrock experience coincidently dovetails with the beginning of two research projects being undertaken by other 21st-century descendants of Nika and her husband, Tom Barritt—one inspired by the new grade-school teacher in Gympie interested in learning the history of the area, and the other involving an international effort to identify recently uncovered remains of World War I soldiers lost in France and Turkey. The relatively short novel has so many characters that it is difficult to keep track of them all. Fortunately, Roots provides a genealogical chart at the beginning, useful when readers become confused. The story also plays havoc with the timeline, jumping back to World War II before briefly returning to the present, and then back again to the 1940s. There’s a quick visit to the 1960s, and then a lengthy foray into the late 19th and early 20th century. It is here that the author successfully creates her most fully developed character, Nika. It is also the section richest in intriguing Gympie history and lore.
A spiritually infused homage to Australia’s diverse heritage hampered by an episodic structure.Pub Date: June 22, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-5434-0071-7
Page Count: 170
Publisher: Xlibris
Review Posted Online: Oct. 16, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
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
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