Enough jabs at law and criminal justice to make a point, all packaged in a courtroom drama that’s pure entertainment.
Krakoff’s debut satire delivers the tale of modest kosher butcher Leopold Plotkin, whose simple act of smearing mud on his shop window leads to a grandiose trial.
Leopold’s been socially awkward since he was a little boy in Fettig, capital city of the Republic. Once his family bequeaths him the butcher shop, he’s uncomfortable displaying his snazzy meat-cutting skills to draw customers. So when that fails to boost sales, Leopold opts for covering the display window with mud. Fettigians, however, are upset, seeing the shrouding of a commercial window as an affront to capitalism. Ensuing protests and demonstrations ultimately become so rowdy that authorities arrest Leopold and throw him in the Purgatory House of Detention for instigating the Mud Crisis. And so begins this farcical take on the justice system, in which a criminal trial commences with a lawyer’s “Opening Rant,” and the prosecution must prove “beyond a Nagging Doubt” that the accused is guilty. Leopold faces seemingly impossible odds. Presiding Justice Stifel, for one, is so convinced of Leopold’s guilt that he overrules every objection from the defense—decreeing each one an interruption—and asks the jury for a verdict before a single witness has even testified. Fortunately, Leopold has employee, pal, and chicken plucker Primo Astigmatopolous and childhood friend Ana Bloom on his side, so there may be a slight chance of an acquittal. Krakoff’s satirical slant definitely has bite—Stifel accessing the courtroom via a dumbwaiter, for example, speaks volumes. But the uproarious novel is first and foremost a comedy, rife with absurdist humor. Some of it is even a comedy of errors: public defender Felix Bleifus, unaware that Leopold’s a butcher, is terrified when he spots blood on his potential client’s shirt. “Unlike most of my competitors,” Leopold says, “I do my own slaughtering.” Krakoff, though, still manages a coherent, engrossing plot. His good-natured protagonist is easy to like, and readers will surely be on edge during the trial, particularly because at least one juror, who admits to despising Leopold, has all but convicted him.
Enough jabs at law and criminal justice to make a point, all packaged in a courtroom drama that’s pure entertainment.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: 978-1-68114-197-8
Page Count: 265
Publisher: Anaphora Literary Press
Review Posted Online: Dec. 14, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2016
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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