An utterly disturbing, but often absorbing, family saga with lots of moving pieces.
Kreidler’s novel charts the growth and decline of the tragic Neiway family across the first half of the 20th century.
When we meet Zack Neiway, he has already married two women, fathered eight children and died. The story then jumps back in time from small-town Wisconsin in the late 1950s to 1916, where two girls, Rachel and Martha, brush one another’s hair and dream about the future. This first of many leaps in time and perspective provides an early glimpse of Zack’s first and second wives. Rachel and Zack soon meet and marry, leaving Martha behind. Rachel gives birth to two daughters and two sons, but an increasingly dissatisfying home life is altogether shattered when she commits suicide. The act seems entirely out of character for a devoutly Catholic mother—faith, its powers and failures are major themes in the narrative—but flashbacks reveal that Rachel’s death is tied to her horrifying discovery about Zack and his daughters. Into this darkness walks Martha, Rachel’s oldest friend, who, if she doesn’t love Zack, at least feels duty-bound to care for the family Rachel left behind. Martha takes over Rachel’s role completely, becoming wife to her husband, mother to her children and, eventually, bearing Zack three daughters and a son. Martha is quick-witted and resourceful, but entirely oblivious to the misdeeds of her husband—which only continue, described in scenes that grow increasingly graphic. The book tells of one family’s twisted secret as it plays out over several decades; it’s an ambitious task, and one the author handles by constantly switching the focus from one character to the next. But there are so many Neiways, and so many strange and terrible things happening to them, that the reader becomes desensitized. Kreidler tackles an extreme taboo, and packs in too many tragic and exotic deaths on top of it. But in-between, he also crafts sentences that are delicate and moving. “The dress smelled somewhat of mothballs, which embarrassed Addie a bit in front of her classmates, but the odor faded, and she understood that life was limited”—writing like this is quietly sad, but gets lost amid so much overt tragedy.
An utterly disturbing, but often absorbing, family saga with lots of moving pieces.Pub Date: Feb. 10, 2011
ISBN: 978-1456849436
Page Count: 207
Publisher: Xlibris
Review Posted Online: March 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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