Idiosyncratic, outlandish—and a good read.
Barth delivers a slim postmodern novel about—what else?—a postmodern novelist experiencing a series of uncanny coincidences and visions.
Narrator G.I. Newett (try saying it aloud) and his wife Amanda, a poet, both teach at Stratford College, a small liberal arts school on Maryland’s Eastern Shore, when weird things start to happen. First, their home is destroyed by a tornado. Then, on a subsequent trip to Europe (in the “other” Stratford, no less), Newett experiences a fall that has all the self-conscious theological resonance Barth can ring from it. What the narrator calls his Accidental Head-Bang occurs on September 22, 2007, not so coincidentally Newitt’s 77th birthday (or the 77th anniversary of his “expulsion from the maternal womb," as he puts it), Yom Kippur and the autumnal equinox. Then begins a series of “post-equinoctial visions,” as well as meditations on those visions, that take Newett back to childhood memories of his best friend Ned Prosper. Newitt relives his early adolescent fumblings, free-wheeling camping trips that involve partner-swapping with Ned and his girlfriend, his short-lived relationship with his first wife and the cultural landscape of the past four decades. The narrative takes place in both past and present, the latter conveyed through generous dialogue with Amanda, a partner every bit as intelligent and sharp-witted as the narrator himself. The brilliance of the novel emerges through Newett’s quirky word play (his reference to the “autumnal equi-knocks," for example, or his discovery that he’s a “'maker-upper, not a tell-aller’”). Eventually he decides to complete the prematurely deceased Ned’s unfinished novel—called Every Third Thought.
Idiosyncratic, outlandish—and a good read.Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-1-58243-755-2
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Counterpoint
Review Posted Online: Sept. 19, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2011
IN THE NEWS
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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