It's 34 years since The Carpetbaggers ignited Robbins's fame, but the familiar scandals, sex, and skulduggery in this late- breaking sequel have cooled to room temperature. Jonas Cord Jr., whose tumultuous relationship with his father ended lovelessly in The Carpetbaggers, by the 1950s has become the Jonas Cord—rich and powerful. Though he has an 18-year-old daughter, Jonas vows to tell his son (should he ever happen to have one) that he loves him. Surprise! Enter his bastard boy, whose mother, elegant wife of a Cuban statesman, Jonas had deflowered and then spurned when she was an ingenue. Jonas Enrique Raul Cord y Batista—Bart for short—is already a brilliant WW II vet-Harvard- grad-lawyer-polyglot-blond-hunk when he meets Dad, who is determined to add heir and businessman to Junior's list of credits. Bart begins to dip his toe into Jonas's dealings, and before you know it he's up to his neck in Mafia-entangled hotel casino deals, entertainment industry high jinks, and messy family politics. Bart discovers that, like his father, he has a taste for sex, money, power, and conflict. So the two go head to head in round after repetitive round of nervous parent vs. rebellious adolescent: Bart has affair with actress, Dad has affair with her competition; Bart launches loser TV variety show, Dad complains he's botching the job; Bart restructures company, Dad cries sabotage; Dad tells Bart to marry longtime classy girlfriend Toni Maxim, Bart says MYOB. Appearances by such real-lifers as Jack Kennedy (with whom Toni sleeps), Che Guevera, Jimmy Hoffa, Tallulah Bankhead, and Danny Kaye add some spice and historical context. Despite clashes in arenas like the corporate shark tank and the gnarled family tree, there is not much bracing conflict here. But generous doses of heavy breathing and heaving buttocks will likely provide solace for Robbins's stalwart fans. If only the plot were as impressively hung as the men.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1995
ISBN: 0-671-87289-3
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 1994
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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