A psychological tale that’s riveting, perceptive, and accessible.
A doctor struggles to understand a woman who allegedly murdered her own child in Lev’s (A Feast of Tears, 2010) thriller.
Dr. Ephraim Ligget prefers being left alone as he works in the psychiatric treatment ward of the Western Washington State Hospital. Half of his face is scarred due to a fire years ago that killed his parents, and his apparent survivor’s guilt has led to him to create another, secret personality, Dr. Hamburger, “the angry part of Ligget’s soul,” who occasionally takes over. Ligget is handling a case for the admission ward of the Forensic Unit, which treats the criminally insane, so Jennifer Stanley becomes his newest patient. Cops arrested her after her son, Edward, claimed that she tried to kill him; he further stated that he witnessed her murdering his younger brother, Robert, whose body police uncover. Jennifer’s lawyer is hoping for an insanity defense, but Ligget is merely assessing her competency to stand trial, which isn’t necessarily related to her state of mind during the supposed crime. Still, the psychologist has trouble completing his report. Tests indicate that Jennifer has a high IQ, so she may be feigning some behavior, such as her disbelief that her son is dead. But Ligget ultimately concludes that she’s not manipulating him and that she’s suffering from PTSD from an unidentified trauma. Although he does eventually rule on whether she’s competent for trial, he remains obsessed with the question of her sanity and looks into her personal life: “His life had been reduced to this—a single case and a single person.” Has Jennifer merely deceived him—or is she actually in need of help? Lev’s novel effectively establishes its hospital setting, where much of the story takes place. One scene, for example, opens with Mrs. Densby and Mrs. Brown at a tea party, anticipating a waiter bringing them tea; it turns out that the two ladies are patients, and the “waiter” who ignores them is a staff member. The hospital is populated by a curious mix of characters, including Frank, a patient experiencing tactile hallucinations who’s been seen by multiple doctors. But although the patients are shown to be a burden at times, the staff members cause just as many problems by skimping on job duties or by too easily prescribing antipsychotic medications. Jennifer is, appropriately, one of the more striking characters—an enigma who understandably baffles Ligget; her son Edward’s perspective reveals specifics about Robert’s murder but provides readers with no more insight into Jennifer’s mind than the doctor has. Nevertheless, Ligget himself, with his alternate personality, is engaging and multifaceted. The author, a practicing psychologist, writes in a style that’s intelligent but always intelligible, even when employing psychiatric jargon, as in his description of Ligget’s initial assessment of Jennifer: “Thinking is realistic and goal directed, speech is relevant, no evidence of hallucinations or delusions, possible dissociative symptoms.” Ligget’s analysis of Jennifer becomes an ongoing mystery, and Lev opts for a pragmatic ending in which nothing’s black and white.
A psychological tale that’s riveting, perceptive, and accessible.Pub Date: Oct. 3, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-974315-16-1
Page Count: 276
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Nov. 24, 2017
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
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
