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
Not as thematically ambitious as Whitehead’s earlier work, but a whole lot of fun to read.
Another surprise from an author who never writes the same novel twice.
Though Whitehead has earned considerable critical acclaim for his earlier work—in particular his debut (The Intuitionist, 1999) and its successor (John Henry Days, 2001)—he’ll likely reach a wider readership with his warmest novel to date. Funniest as well, though there have been flashes of humor throughout his writing. The author blurs the line between fiction and memoir as he recounts the coming-of-age summer of 15-year-old Benji Cooper in the family’s summer retreat of New York’s Sag Harbor. “According to the world, we were the definition of paradox: black boys with beach houses,” writes Whitehead. Caucasians are only an occasional curiosity within this idyll, and parents are mostly absent as well. Each chapter is pretty much a self-contained entity, corresponding to a rite of passage: getting the first job, negotiating the mysteries of the opposite sex. There’s an accident with a BB gun and plenty of episodes of convincing someone older to buy beer, but not much really happens during this particular summer. Yet by the end of it, Benji is well on his way to becoming Ben, and he realizes that he is a different person than when the summer started. He also realizes that this time in his life will eventually live only in memory. There might be some distinctions between Benji and Whitehead, though the novelist also spent his youthful summers in Sag Harbor and was the same age as Benji in 1985, when the novel is set. Yet the first-person narrator has the novelist’s eye for detail, craft of character development and analytical instincts for sharp social commentary.
Not as thematically ambitious as Whitehead’s earlier work, but a whole lot of fun to read.Pub Date: April 28, 2009
ISBN: 978-0-385-52765-1
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2009
BOOK TO SCREEN
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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