Veteran novelist Carroll (Dog Eat Dog, 1999, etc.) offers a heady brew of military history and conspiracy theory that will appeal to aficionados of both.
The Pulitzer Prize–nominated journalist smartly centers this historical novel, an amalgam of fact and supposition, on a charming rogue. Lowell Brady is a junior naval officer looking for a safe place to ride out the seemingly inevitable World War II. As the son of a wealthy mother and the stepson of an influential senator, he sees it as his natural-born right; years later, he says, “[Y]ou run into men who say they want to be ‘tested’ in battle, but…ignorance explains the greater part of that. Being in a situation where heroes are made is damned poor planning in the first place.” His henpecked stepfather was a confidant of President Franklin Roosevelt, and FDR decides to use young Brady’s natural proclivity as a gossip to gather information at the highest levels of American and British societies. The president wants to find a way to overcome the American public’s aversion to joining the war effort before it’s too late. Brady undergoes a dizzying ascension, during which he meets such historical giants as Winston Churchill and Josef Stalin, but he eventually becomes a man who knows too much—and his minimal conscience ends up getting him in trouble with the powers that be. Later, in 1953, Smithsonian researcher Harriet Gallatin discovers Brady living under a pseudonym in a veteran’s home, where he tells her a shocking tale: Roosevelt, he says, “schemed to bring us into war with Japan, and even knew that their fleet was en route to Pearl Harbor.” As a result, she soon finds herself in danger as well. Carroll believably brings both historical and fictional figures to life while slowly and skillfully unreeling Brady’s story, which shifts back and forth between World War II and the early 1950s. The fast-paced story successfully juxtaposes Brady’s own first-person remembrances and Gallatin’s initially skeptical analysis of the man (“Brady said that most of the recent history I knew was bunk”). Overall, the author’s journalistic style develops a detailed portrait of an unlucky man caught up in events far beyond his control.
A riveting adventure that effectively explores the idea that history is written by the winners.
Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2014
ISBN: 978-0989826907
Page Count: 360
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Sept. 15, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 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
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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