A dynamic, multifaceted treat.
Debut author Morris offers a timely novel about a food safety crisis.
An E. coli outbreak. A product recall. For most people, such events trigger a cursory check of the refrigerator or a doctor’s appointment, at most, but this novel shows how, for those working in the food industry, they’re a storm on the horizon and that even the most basic, everyday choices can dramatically alter fate. Stella Gonzalez, who washes produce for the Green Earth Organics corporation, struggles with the fact that her company fails to provide her with a living wage even after she’s worked there for 15 years to provide for her daughter. Executive Jane Janhusen, meanwhile, loves the company and her position at the right hand of company head Kate Worthington, an organic-food celebrity. But when a food crisis unfolds, saving their reputations and that of the company becomes harder than she could have imagined. On the outside, Ruth Malmquist fears for her son’s life after he’s infected by contaminated spinach. The three women’s conflicting desires intersect and entangle, while Green Earth Organics founder Roger Worthington, Kate’s husband, offers perspective into the gritty details of corporate damage control. The points of view shift and change as the crisis progresses, creating an engaging narrative of personal responsibility. Morris’ writing is strong and incisive, the plot is complex and nuanced, and the attention to detail keeps the story compelling throughout. Specifically, the book conveys a great deal of information about the workings of the agricultural industry, especially for such a slim volume—from executives’ concerns regarding management, public relations, and the possibility of selling the company to the laborers’ thoughts on unionization and how all these factors affect the world at large. What’s more, setting the story in 2008 allows it to address the rise of health food and lifestyle celebrities, local-food movements, the advent of “superfoods,” and even the financial crisis. The novel also tackles difficult issues involving family, grief, and sexual harassment with compassionate tact and multicultural insight.
A dynamic, multifaceted treat.Pub Date: Feb. 21, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-5246-6999-7
Page Count: 212
Publisher: AuthorHouse
Review Posted Online: June 14, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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