Lightweight fare—just right for the YA market—but an amiable addition to coming-out fiction.
An appealing, if slight, novel of coming out of the closet in the ’80s, from Babcock (The Tragedy of Miss Geneva Flowers, 2005).
What distinguishes this work and infuses it with charm is the age of our hero, Andy. Coming-of-age tales typically involve a teen filled with all the usual demons and angst, self-loathing and cynicism. But Andy is just turning 12, and is too much of an innocent for any kind of existential reflection. This is the novel’s saving grace: Andy’s genuine goofiness and naïveté ring so true it’s impossible to dislike him. Andy is sure that sixth grade will be the best year of his life. And why not? He has everybody’s favorite teacher, Sister Mary Kelly, and he’s in love with Mark Saddle, athletic, beautiful and part of the in-crowd. Andy shamelessly tries to move up the popularity ladder to get closer to Mark, but it’s a long climb from the bottom rung, where he lingers with his old best friend, James. Effeminate, lisping James, whom everyone at school calls a “faggot,” can’t understand why Andy is now joining in on the name-calling, especially since the two spend their sleepovers playing sex games. Andy feels sorry for James, but his sense of self-preservation is greater than his adolescent loyalty. James sits alone at lunch, is beat up by Andy’s new “friends” and continues with his passion—drawing epic portraits of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Wishes come true as Andy is suspiciously befriended by Mark, who invites the hopelessly inept boy to practice basketball one-on-one at his house. Meanwhile, Andy the budding writer is working on his third novel, featuring Beverly, who, oddly enough, is in love with a boy named Mark. Andy’s novel-in-progress, his prayers to Jesus to keep him from being a gay weirdo and his complex friendship with James, hit just the right note. Andy is neither the wise child nor a noble symbol for discrimination; he’s just a likable kid coming to terms with his homosexuality.
Lightweight fare—just right for the YA market—but an amiable addition to coming-out fiction.Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-7867-1647-9
Page Count: 144
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2006
BOOK REVIEW
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
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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