The heroine’s second outing (Imogene in New Orleans, 2014), packed with zany characters, nicely captures the feeling of a...
A road trip to a Florida mermaid theme park goes terribly wrong.
Imogene; her hypochondriac son, Billy; her sister, Agnes; Billy's life partner, Jackson; and their bulldog, Goose, have driven from their Alabama home to Clear Springs Park expecting a relaxing vacation. Things go wrong from the start when their ride on a glass-bottom boat gives them a clear view of a body floating in the water. Capt. Stedman has just finished telling them the ancient tale of a pair of star-crossed lovers found dead together in the part of the river since christened the Bridal Chamber. He didn't even mention the body of Grant Scroggins, which was found floating in the river in 1972. When the dead man John Kent’s wallet is found in Goose’s baby carriage, Billy is arrested, and Jackson is frantic to get him released. Imogene and Agnes, who are made of tougher fabric, decide to do a little sleuthing on their own. They steal a golf cart, adopt a wild baby monkey, and dig into the murky past of Capt. Stedman and former mermaid Esther Wiggins, Clear Springs events coordinator. They also meet the photographer who made the park famous; the love of his life, a former mermaid in the nearby water park for African-Americans; a tough-talking current mermaid; and the wife and son of John Kent , who were on the boat when his body was discovered. Imogene, who’s sure that all these people hiding past secrets are better suspects than Billy, plans to prove that one of them is the real killer.
The heroine’s second outing (Imogene in New Orleans, 2014), packed with zany characters, nicely captures the feeling of a Florida water park. But the mystery is scattershot, and it takes forever to unveil the killer.Pub Date: Sept. 5, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-9909792-9-6
Page Count: 310
Publisher: Rolltop Publishing
Review Posted Online: Aug. 21, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2016
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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