A political satire wanders off course after a promising start.
A small city mayoral race takes some strange turns when a freakish creature dominates the race.
Former journalist Gray Davenport’s life is about as exciting as his nondescript name. Campaign consultant to a perennial also-ran who's floundering again in a three-man race for mayor of Grand River, a pollution-drenched West Coast city whose government is controlled by a cabal of shadowy businessmen, pulling the strings from the local gated community, he’s drowning in self-pity, not least because his marriage to an aspiring (if untalented) artist, fond of Jackson Pollock–like paint splatters, is crumbling. When Reason Wilder, an 8-foot-tall candidate who bears a striking resemblance to a famous 19th-century literary monster, captures the imagination of Grand River’s citizens, with his vaguely populist claims to offer “A way of the people. A way that reflects us all,” Gray sets out to unravel the mystery behind his appeal. That effort (and Gray’s emotional life) is complicated after the alluring Breeze Wellington, a marketing expert with a previous life as a porn star, appears in town and thrusts herself into a campaign that’s soon noteworthy for its deception and betrayal. Ponepinto’s (Curtain Calls, 2015) style doesn’t lack wit or an apt turn of phrase capable of evoking an audible chuckle, as when he describes the “astrologically-themed downtown grid” of Grand River that produces a street named “Cancer Boulevard,” but those talents only carry this uneven novel so far. There are sufficient twists to keep the plot energized, but the pallid protagonist eventually becomes more irritating than sympathetic. Ponepinto has some definite ideas about the flaws of the democratic process—notably, how easy it is to manipulate public opinion—but he wobbles between satirizing the shortcomings of political life and exploring the science-fiction elements of Reason’s existence, including the machinations of the corrupt genius who created him, without fully committing to either story. That structural flaw becomes especially apparent as the novel lurches toward its bizarre climax.
A political satire wanders off course after a promising start.Pub Date: March 7, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-9984092-4-5
Page Count: 300
Publisher: 7.13 Books
Review Posted Online: Dec. 11, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2018
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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