Ex-rock-and-roll star Kihn's first novel, Horror Show (1996), was a romp based on the satirical film Ed Wood. This time out, he deals with the Banshee, the Irish angel of death, also sometimes regarded as the avenging angel of wronged womanhood. Through a restaurant window, Manhattan shrink Jukes Wahler has himself seen the Banshee, the most beautiful woman on earth. Soon after, a new patient, Declan Loomis, a paranoid, comes for comforting: He, too, has seen the Banshee and asks Wahler to help him die. Wahler, of course, attempts to talk Loomis out of his crazy idea—but not long after, Loomis turns up dead, having been murdered in a particularly grisly fashion. And he's not the only one. The week before, Wahler discovers, Brendan Killian (a radical poet from Ireland) died in the same manner, his body seemingly destroyed by an explosion. Meanwhile, Wahler's sister Cathy has been beaten to a pulp yet again by her vicious fashion photographer boyfriend, Bobby Sudden, who hangs around with Irish terrorist Padraic O'Connor—another who has seen the Banshee and is convinced that he will die. Bobby beats up Wahler, abducts Cathy, and Wahler reports him. But reluctant police see only a lovers' quarrel. Wahler then goes off to see Fiona Rice, a professor of Irish mythology, who fills him in on the Banshee. Is it running amok in Manhattan? By this time, Bobby has got Cathy strung out on heroin. He also, as it happens, likes to kill whores and take snuff photos of their mutilated bodies, to the accompaniment of Procol Harum's recording of ``A Whiter Shade of Pale.'' O'Connor, pretending to be a private detective, visits Wahler and tells him he'll find Cathy for him if Wahler will find the Banshee in return, in hopes that Wahler can help him get off the hook with the ferocious angel. Before Wahler can act, though, the Banshee comes calling on Bobby. Less original but better told than Horror Show.
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1997
ISBN: 0-312-86046-3
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Forge
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1997
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
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
