A gripping, bighearted novel about four merry pranksters confronting their past.
In Edwards’ debut novel, a quartet of bohemians encounters obstacles to their blissful life.
Four high school friends are on the cusp of graduating from Somerset School in Tulsa, Oklahoma, in the late 1960s. These young men—Allie Reed, Michael Moller, Joey Liptisch, and Tate Henry—aren’t run-of-the-mill seniors, however; they’re self-appointed Keepers of the Get, an ongoing process of joking subversion at the school. The Get is “a combination of comedy-based social reform and artistic expression” and a “practical joke par excellence.” To these four, the Get is “the wink at the world’s end,” and they naturally wonder if the adult world they’re facing has any use for it. Edwards heightens the implicit tension of such a transition by framing the bulk of his novel a quarter-century in the future, when Tate, Allie, and Michael are traveling back to Somerset for their first meeting in 20 years. The occasion is the retirement of their former mentor—the school’s longtime chaplain, Father David Miles—but Edwards also makes the reader aware that there's a mystery involving the fate of the fourth Get-keeper, Joey: “We’re on the edge of a cliff,” Joey had observed when they were graduating. “Our world’s caving in on us, burning to the ground.” Edwards skillfully constructs his story within a story to leave readers wondering how prophetic such sentiments were. The atmosphere in these pages is picaresque, and the prose can be florid. However, the descriptions can also be evocative: “He looked like some sort of French prince come to modern times—royalty and intelligence framed with a certain disheveled look.” The fate of Tate’s comatose father, the former mayor of Tulsa, adds a wrinkle to an already charged plot.
A gripping, bighearted novel about four merry pranksters confronting their past.Pub Date: Jan. 9, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-4505-4914-1
Page Count: 232
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: May 27, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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