An engaging escapade with a feisty female lead.
A debut historical novel focuses on an adventurous young woman living in Seattle before and after Washington Territory was granted statehood.
It is 1889, and Anna Gallagher is 19 years old. As a child, she was brought to Seattle by her grandfather Oscar after her parents and grandmother died of smallpox in Ireland. Oscar owns a bookshop in town and Anna works for him. Her grandfather wants to find her a suitable husband to secure her a stable future, but the independent Anna has her own agenda. She craves travel and excitement; she is not ready to be tied down by marriage. Her most passionate dream is to be the first woman to scale Mount Rainier: “She’d always wanted to travel around Washington Territory, or take to the sea like her brother Levi, even though it wouldn’t be proper. Every time she looked up at that mountain, it was as if it was daring her to do something great.” When an explosion and fire race through Seattle’s main shopping street, shutting down all businesses, Anna has time to indulge in one of her favorite pastimes: long walks in the woods. There she meets Heather, a member of the Duwamish tribe, who lives off-reservation with her baby and grandmother in a cabin deep in the woods. The developing friendship between these two young women, a relationship that infuriates Anna’s bigoted grandfather, is the connection point for several intriguing plotlines that run through the charming narrative—a treasure hunt for a hidden emerald ring; the protagonist’s training to join a climbing expedition up Mount Rainier; and the issue of Seattle’s reprehensible treatment of Native Americans. Navigating around one or two suitable eligible bachelors, the spirited Anna makes secret plans to achieve her aspirations. McGillen has penned an appealing and gentle tale about relationships; Anna is more Nancy Drew than Wonder Woman. But the mystery of the ring is a satisfying puzzle, and Anna’s struggle to find her place in a society that wants to constrain her within appropriate gender roles is enhanced by the author’s attention to details—of fashion, culture, and even mountain climbing.
An engaging escapade with a feisty female lead.Pub Date: Sept. 16, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-73342-392-2
Page Count: 358
Publisher: The Evergreen Bookshelf
Review Posted Online: Oct. 31, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
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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