While the execution often stumbles, this tale of a remarkable bull raises important ideas about animal abuse and cruelty.
Hoyt’s debut novel uses touches of magical realism to describe a bull’s adventures.
Okie the bull is only a few minutes old when he has his first adventure, a run-in with a lion, which, sadly, was someone’s discarded exotic pet. Similarly, many of Okie’s experiences serve to highlight different forms of animal abuse or show the resilient character of the young bull. A rattlesnake friend is harvested illegally by a character known as Rattlesnake Anderson. Sometime later, it’s Okie and his best friend Harold, another calf, who are rounded up by Anderson. They become part of a rodeo in which the animals suffer numerous abuses. But when he sees Harold killed and discarded, it’s too much for Okie; he escapes the arena and finds himself in New York City. He swims to New Jersey and winds up going on a cross-country adventure; he meets both friends and foes on his journey back to Oklahoma, including one final run-in with the dastardly Anderson. It’s not immediately apparent who the intended audience is. While the language tends to suggest an adult audience, the length, subject matter and occasionally didactic style feel more appropriate for younger readers, though references like “Bill Clinton could not have slicked in better” will go over kids’ heads. Okie finds himself in many dangerous situations, but the distant tone of the narrator and a heavy use of the passive voice tend to downplay the seriousness of the encounters. Occasional meta moments can be distracting; at a pivotal point in the tale, the narrator asks, “Are you an Okie? Will you seize the ‘Okie Moment’ if you have a chance?” Though the animals are presented as sentient, they do not speak as humans. In this way, the book maintains a realistic tone even as touches of magic help to guide Okie on his journey.
While the execution often stumbles, this tale of a remarkable bull raises important ideas about animal abuse and cruelty.Pub Date: Jan. 1, 2008
ISBN: 978-0615190945
Page Count: 117
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Dec. 8, 2014
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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