Perturbing, anomalous stories that will bore into readers’ minds.
Hamantaschen’s (You Shall Never Know Security, 2011) latest collection of twisted tales once again explores the dark side of human nature.
Rather appropriately, “Vernichtungsschmerz” kick-starts this book of nine outlandish, unnerving stories. In it, a creature in a dream offers teenage Julia a way to escape the pain of a natural death, a perfect example of the author toying with the horror genre. Creatures are often metaphors; in the opening tale, the reason behind a monster’s arrival takes precedence over a human’s natural urge to shudder or flee. Some stories may show signs of genre convention, but they ultimately unravel in gleefully unconventional ways. In “Soon Enough This Will Essentially Be a True Story,” a crazed writer is irate that noted online reviewer Karen hasn’t critiqued his book, yet she may be the one who gets a happy ending. Bryce, meanwhile, in “I’m a Good Person, I Mean Well and I Deserve Better,” makes an unlikely hero, but just because he saves the damsel in distress doesn’t mean he gets the girl. There’s an overwhelming sense of dread among all the characters, be it a general fear of death or, in the case of Miles in “It’s Not Feelings of Anxiety; It’s One, Constant Feeling: Anxiety,” fear that he may not be the family man for Miranda and 18-month-old Craig. At the same time, readers may dread social worker Alex’s learning why his unemployed, constantly pregnant client, Gloria, seems to be well-off in “The Gulf of Responsibility.” While Hamantaschen sometimes subverts garden-variety monsters or villains, a callback to an earlier story in “Oh Abel, Oh Absalom” implies an inexorable, omniscient evil that’s perhaps had its hand in more than just those two tales. Many of the playful titles are a smidge overlong, but the author easily churns out penetrating, somber prose: “So the promise of painless escape went unexplored, so abominable; so abhorrent was that option, as if death would never come unless it was a choice proactively taken.”
Perturbing, anomalous stories that will bore into readers’ minds.Pub Date: Sept. 9, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-5171-1398-8
Page Count: 308
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Nov. 16, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2015
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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