A novel about a magazine editor’s trials and crusades that fails to deliver a convincing plot.
A tale imagines an Anna Wintour-esque figure as Mary Poppins performing social work in Brooklyn.
Latimer’s debut YA novel introduces Miss Berta London, a wealthy New Yorker who rules Eloquent Fashion Magazine with an iron fist. When Miss Berta demands drastic, last-minute changes to the magazine’s photo shoot/fashion show, “top representatives from some of the best fashion companies” are disgusted by her “punk, urban risk to be edgy.” A media frenzy ensues, Miss Berta berates her staff, designers refuse to “endorse” the publication, and Eloquent Fashion Magazine folds. Suddenly humble, Miss Berta apologizes to model Heather Tilling, “the nicest action she had ever done for anyone.” Believing that “my failure means destiny is speaking to me,” Miss Berta pursues a teaching certificate, then becomes a nanny despite being “not very acquainted with children.” She gains the trust of her three young charges, organizes their schedules and wardrobes, and mends the family dynamic as she begins to “contribute to society in a positive way.” Heather connects the nanny with “a business investor” who offers Miss Berta her own family-themed magazine. Three years later, with the new publication a success, Miss Berta discovers the “abnormal” Johnson family, a single-parent household struggling financially. Because of her “background in education and previous nanny experience,” she believes it is “her duty to help the Johnsons,” but Henrietta Johnson slams the door in her face. Twice. Undeterred, Miss Berta connects with AJ, Henrietta’s underage son, promising him a laptop and a trip to Geneva in exchange for a cover story about his life in the “sewer.” The author, like Miss Berta, seems unaware of the exploitative ramifications of a media mogul literally forcing herself into a family’s home and becoming a boy’s teacher to serve as “a source of inspiration.” Miss Berta tells AJ: “Never let your background interfere with your destiny.” After Henrietta’s boyfriend, Lucas, gets into a fight with AJ and the narrative offers an odd kidnapping plot, loose ends are tied up neatly. But will everyone be grateful for mansion-dwelling, globe-trotting, magazine-owning Miss Berta? Well-intentioned, but ultimately tone-deaf, this book breaches the limits of credibility in an attempt to motivate “today’s youth.”
A novel about a magazine editor’s trials and crusades that fails to deliver a convincing plot.Pub Date: Aug. 20, 2010
ISBN: 978-1-4537-1965-7
Page Count: 194
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: June 13, 2019
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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