A romp through mystery, science fiction and popular culture that will please readers looking for a smarter breed of fantasy.
A witty, fast-paced novel about a hack journalist and an unbelievable headline come to life.
Matthew Granger, a once-promising journalist living in the shadow of an illustrious father, travels around the rural news beats for the Fortean publication World News Explorer, looking for scoops on bat boys, Hitler’s heads and even the faintest insinuation of a UFO. Taylor renders the psychology of the younger Granger in an authentic, competent indirect discourse; Granger’s thoughts, observations and anxieties are at once charming and exasperating as his witty, keen consciousness charms readers to his side. Armed and cursed with a photographic memory, Granger is made an all-too keen observer of the most significant and trivial details of his stream of consciousness, but it’s this special ability that allows him to pierce the veil while rummaging through the gossip and local folklore of another backwater town with a tall tale to tell. Peppered throughout the opening passages of the novel are unsettling interludes of Granger’s experience in a room, vacillating between sensations of piercing light and darkness, until eventually it is revealed that these disjointed episodes are the calling cards of a personal abduction that he had previously treated as mere copy fodder. The novel remains true to its title and without breaking the carefully plotted suspension of disbelief, Granger uncovers the reality behind the panoply of abduction mythology without resorting to extraterrestrial vistas or campy cosmic journeys. This doesn’t mean that there aren’t wonderful elements of fantasy; his relationship with the creature Little One and Granger’s attempt to develop fluent telepathic communication are rendered with humor and insight as he finds Little One’s lack of extraverbal communication frustrating and intriguing. Taylor writes carefully and craftily in a story that pays homage to the absurdity and pathos at the heart of a culture that wishes crop circles were more than just pranks on a grand, if not cosmic, scale.
A romp through mystery, science fiction and popular culture that will please readers looking for a smarter breed of fantasy.Pub Date: May 18, 2011
ISBN: B0051P0OWI
Page Count: 251
Publisher: Kindle Edition
Review Posted Online: July 28, 2011
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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