The follow-up to an international best-seller starts off well but falls apart under its own best intentions.
The tumultuous life of a cat spans the equally turbulent lives of the mother and daughter who share her always-changing New York City existence.
Prudence the tabby never expected to find the right human. Living alone in a deserted construction site on the Lower East Side, she's drawn first to Sarah's singing: As a feral kitten, music is new to her. And while she quickly gets used to the idea of having a "roommate," as she puts it, Sarah's irregular lifestyle means that meals can't be counted on. When Sarah finally disappears one day, Prudence is taken in by Laura, Sarah's daughter, and her husband and trades a bohemian existence for more conventional comforts. But as the tabby learns, even life on the Upper West Side can have its ups and downs. Not only does she witness the aftereffects of Sarah and Laura's often strained relationship, she runs into danger in the form of an innocent-seeming bouquet. Initially presented in the first-person by the cat, this book by Cooper (Homer's Odyssey, 2009) achieves a matter-of-fact directness that only occasionally veers into cutesiness ("[S]ometimes Sarah eats things that are just plain gross. There's one kind of food, called 'cookies'...") But Prudence's scope is insufficient to convey the entirety of this New-York-in-the-'90s saga, and by the book's second half, human narratives begin to take over. While these are often affecting—relating the different sides of the mother–daughter struggle—they seem to come from a different book. And real-life events, notably the city-ordered demolition of a tenement with some of the occupants' pets left inside, are not convincingly woven into the narrative. The result is moving but uneven, and even a feel-good ending from the cat's viewpoint can't pull the story back together.
The follow-up to an international best-seller starts off well but falls apart under its own best intentions.Pub Date: Jan. 22, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-345-52694-6
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Bantam
Review Posted Online: Dec. 2, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2012
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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