The grand master of the deep-water thriller (Medusa, 1988, etc.) sails to coldest Chile, Tierra del Fuego, and antarctic points beyond to pick at the old sores and hidden horrors of Argentina's shameful politics. The job prospects for youngish Peter Kettil are not good. Declared redundant by the conglomerate that has bought out the ancient East Anglian firm for which he worked, Kettil, a fine sailor and an expert in the arcana of wood preservation, sees nothing for it but to become a consultant. His very first job is a doozy: He's summoned to the naval museum at Greenwich to meet with glamorous South American widow Iris Sunderby and Iain Ward, a blustering Scotsman who wants to apply his recent wealth to the search for an icebound 19th-century sailing ship discovered in Antarctica by the late Mr. Sunderby. The museum would like Peter's opinion on the ship's condition. Peter hires on, but the apparent murder of beautiful Iris by her hotheaded ``cousin,'' an Argentine student adrift in London, seems to doom the expedition. Mr. Ward, however, insists that Peter accompany him to Peru, where, after a hair-raising trek through the coastal desert and the maritime Andes, they find Mrs. Sunderby alive and in the clutches of a villain who has been enjoying her drugged favors and who may be her brother. Once rescued, Iris is still eager to fit out the motor sailboat for which the increasingly mysterious Mr. Ward has plunked down cash. The search will be anything but straightforward. The murderous student from London is not only in town but is eager to sign on the crew. And he and Iris are terribly interested in the kidnapper from Peru who has decamped to the Straits of Magellan, where he too plans to join the search. Located after some rather heroic seamanship, the mystery ship yields up its dreadful secrets and Iris's family tree is untangled. A sensational cruise. Innes knows sailing as well as anybody writing and manages to make being soaked and frozen in the Straits of Magellan attractive. The mystery is clever, too, though off- putting.
Pub Date: March 4, 1992
ISBN: 0-312-07003-9
Page Count: 352
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1992
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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