A shapeless but engaging portrayal of its underachieving protagonist and narrator is the best feature of this bittersweet second novel by Lennon (The Light of Failing Stars, 1997). Unsuccessful artist Tim Mix returns home (Riverbank, New Jersey) for the funeral of his father Carl, a successful cartoonist whose popular “Family Funnies” strip had exploited his own family’s life. And that’s the problem: Carl’s widow Dorothy is in a nursing home suffering from “senile dementia”; their five children all inhibiting guilts and neuroses—notably, Tim’s uptight older brother Bobby and younger brother Pierce, a paranoid schizophrenic who seldom leaves the house. As the Mixes, uh, mix, reestablishing their essential (and mutual) unconcern, Tim contrarily finds himself drawn away from the independence he had created, and back into the orbits of his family and his father’s legacy. He inherits the opportunity to take over “Family Funnies,” and is feted by his hometown at a (hilarious) “Funny Fest” that celebrates Carl Mix’s fame (the town even renames itself “Mixville”). The story charts Tim’s imperfect adjustments to such temptations and distractions, as well as his relationships with Brad Wurster, the choleric artist who tutors him; Ken Dorn, the sinister rival cartoonist who has designs on “Family Funnies”; and Susan Lennon Caletti, his father’s editor, and, just possibly, the new woman in Tim’s life. Overall, it’s an uneven performance: Lennon’s prose (skillfully rendering Tim’s alert, wary sensibility) is witty and observant, studded with odd, often truculent imagery (“She had the long blotchy nose of a border collie and cheeks sunken enough to eat soup out of”), while his characterizations vary from, well, cartoonish to precise and affecting (the destroyed Dorothy and jittery Pierce are especially vivid). Tim Mix’s gradual transformation from passivity to involvement and accomplishment is his story’s wistful core. If you believe in it, you’ll like Lennon’s novel.
Pub Date: Feb. 15, 1999
ISBN: 1-57322-126-0
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Riverhead
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 1998
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.
A violent surfacing of adolescence (which has little in common with Tarkington's earlier, broadly comic, Seventeen) has a compulsive impact.
"Nobody big except me" is the dream world of Holden Caulfield and his first person story is down to the basic, drab English of the pre-collegiate. For Holden is now being bounced from fancy prep, and, after a vicious evening with hall- and roommates, heads for New York to try to keep his latest failure from his parents. He tries to have a wild evening (all he does is pay the check), is terrorized by the hotel elevator man and his on-call whore, has a date with a girl he likes—and hates, sees his 10 year old sister, Phoebe. He also visits a sympathetic English teacher after trying on a drunken session, and when he keeps his date with Phoebe, who turns up with her suitcase to join him on his flight, he heads home to a hospital siege. This is tender and true, and impossible, in its picture of the old hells of young boys, the lonesomeness and tentative attempts to be mature and secure, the awful block between youth and being grown-up, the fright and sickness that humans and their behavior cause the challenging, the dramatization of the big bang. It is a sorry little worm's view of the off-beat of adult pressure, of contemporary strictures and conformity, of sentiment….
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.Pub Date: June 15, 1951
ISBN: 0316769177
Page Count: -
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1951
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
APPRECIATIONS
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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