Disappointing second run from Sherwood (the highly touted Vindication, 1993), whose unmemorable protagonistafter scarcely credible encounters with trendy icons and rebels of the 1950sfinally discovers who she really is. As the daughter of a Mormon from Utah, Zoe Mclaren, growing up in 1950s Monterey, Calif., finds the conventional life her father tries to maintain stifling. So apparently does her closet-alcoholic Armenian mother. But Zoe is much more interested in herself. She befriends Margo, the black adopted daughter of leftist intellectuals, and the two girls discuss Camus, look for Beat poets in San Francisco, and dream of college. At the same time, Zoe, though allegedly bright, prefers to act dumb: She seduces Margo's father, and, when he commits suicide after a lovers' quarrel, marries partNative American Grey Cloud right after high school. Grey takes her away to the land he's been given on the Big Sur, where he plans to build a house and observe traditional customs. At first, Zoe is sure she's done the right thing; after all, she was ``loved by a man...our life together was going to have meaning, be a grand adventure.'' But life in the wilds is harder than she'd ever imagined, especially when she becomes pregnant and Greyoverfond of peyotebeats her so badly that she almost miscarries. Zoe escapes to an aunt in Monterey, where her daughter is born; then to San Francisco, where she's arrested for shoplifting. Later, there's a sojourn in Salt Lake City with eccentric but loving Mormon great-aunts; then it's back to the West Coast. Meanwhile, Grey is pursuing her. A horrific confrontation is followed by an unsuccessful suicide attempt, but finally Zoe realizes she must ``hang on.'' As her mother tells her: ``You will never forget, but you can forgive. Forgive yourself.'' Despite the rich mix of culture, history, politics, and relentlessly offbeat characters: not much more than standard insights into family and finding oneself.
Pub Date: Aug. 1, 1995
ISBN: 0-374-16673-0
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 1995
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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