A cloning experiment leads to the restoration of an ancient civilization in Berkhout’s debut sci-fi novel.
In the year 2020, Fred Edwards and his colleague Sandrina LaFaccia of the Oriental Institute at the University of Chicago are deeply involved in research on Egyptian mummies. They enjoy their work, and are anxious to learn as much as possible about their subjects. Fred suggests to LaFaccia and their director, Dr. John Beatty, that they try to clone a mummy, in order to track its development. They decide to fertilize human eggs with genetic material taken from King Tut, then work with a fertility clinic to implant the eggs in the wombs of women seeking treatment. To ensure their experiment escapes scrutiny, they match the eggs with women who look like they could have given birth to boys that resemble the pharaoh. At first, the experiment seems to be a success; however, the project is eventually disbanded and Edwards, LaFaccia and Beatty lose control of their clones. Years later, a series of events brings the clones together. They soon learn the incredible secret of their birth and chart a course to rule Egypt once again. Berkhout’s audacious premise is buttressed by vivid settings and finely drawn characters. The settings are expansive, stretching from Illinois and Wisconsin to Germany, Australia and conflict-battered Egypt. Berkhout moves back and forth through these places at a frenetic pace that adds urgency to the narrative. The clones, and their respective home environments, are particularly well-conceived; each clone stands out as a unique character, due to Berkhout’s skillful development of their diverse backgrounds. However, the novel does suffer a bit from curious editing choices; for example, certain curse words are censored, but the seduction of a young clone by his mother’s girlfriend is presented in graphic detail.
Berkhout brings a provocative premise to life, but its effect is somewhat diminished by awkward editing.
Pub Date: May 1, 2014
ISBN: 978-1629010557
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Inkwater Press
Review Posted Online: July 31, 2014
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
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
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