As a portrait of the great composer and a foray into sci-fi, the book is ambitious, informative and meandering.
A part biographical, part sci-fi novel from author Gaertner (Preacher Sean, Antiterrorist, 2009).
The first portion of the book follows Ludwig van Beethoven from his childhood in the 1770s through his turbulent adulthood. Though Beethoven would leave behind an immense body of work, the reader learns that it wasn’t without great difficulty. With hearing issues arising as early as his 30s (“My ‘touch and go’ hearing continued as usual with its alternating ‘good spells’ and ‘bad spells’ ”) and getting only worse as he aged, irritability, public outrages and family disputes were all part of the Beethoven legacy. Of course, through all the physical and mental anguish, there remained a man dedicated to his art: “[Y]ou must wonder what a deaf old musician can possibly hear in your playing….I have learned to hear with my eyes!” Following Beethoven’s death in 1827, the novel takes a sharp turn. The idea of the “Second-Order Life,” a complex system of reincarnation that allows one to continue with the journey of the soul, is introduced. A young man named Paul Rezler ends up carrying on the soul (or “spiritual subelectron”) of Beethoven, and so the process of creativity continues well into fantastic worlds: “One solid year is spent visiting a hundred musical capitals on eighty-three different cultural planets” and Earth alike. Muddled by periods of heavy explanation, the book often takes on more of a dreamlike quality than a vigorous narrative: “Of the 600 planets comprising the system proper, there are 351 located within the Aaronian galaxy. These include one Administrative Planet (Aaron AP) that houses the seat of government, the College of Counselors, Population Records and Control, the Cultural Archives, etc., plus 350 planets supporting Aaronian life.” Readers unperturbed by lingering over Beethoven’s creations (both real and imagined) will find the pace suitable, particularly as elbows are rubbed with other masters ranging from Mozart to Handel. Readers without much patience for highly expository discussions of detailed concepts—such as “Any day now, a pair of Earthlings will die out of their First-Order existence….All that is ‘eternal’ about them is faithfully recorded in their spiritual subelectrons, which are death-freed from their First-Order brains, and which have sufficient spiritual momentum to place them in orbit within the third subelectronic ring, setting the spherical boundary of our own Second-Order-MAJOR universe”—may find themselves lost in the vast, albeit highly structured, world of changing souls and bodies.
As a portrait of the great composer and a foray into sci-fi, the book is ambitious, informative and meandering.Pub Date: Sept. 30, 2014
ISBN: 978-1499068191
Page Count: 658
Publisher: Xlibris
Review Posted Online: Jan. 15, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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