An amiable and good-humored take on an old story, with an interesting West vs. East slant that enlivens what could have been...
German author Duve debuts with the tale of a young couple who move to the country seeking peace and quiet, only to find their lives turned inside out.
Two attractive yuppies from Hamburg, Leon and Martina Ulbricht, have recently married and are eager to settle down. Leon is a writer, Martina a production assistant on a television talk show. They imagine their future lying in what was East Germany, where real estate is cheap and plenty of open space remains. So they pack their belongings and hit the road for the town of Priesnitz, where they have bought a house with Leon’s advance for a biography of the Hamburg gangster Benno Pfitzner. (A measure of Leon’s innocence is that, although both the advance and his car were gifts from Pfitzner himself, he is still confident he can write an objective account.) Their first impression of the house is disappointing, but that’s mainly because it’s a day of torrential rain, the surrounding fields a quagmire. So they reserve their opinion for a sunny day—which never arrives. The rain continues unabated, and they soon realize that the stench in the air is coming from the marshes that surround them on every side. Leon finds it difficult to work in such an atmosphere and begins to take long walks in the damp to get his mind off his writer’s block. In the course of one of these strolls he’s accosted and seduced by Isadora Schlei, his older and somewhat obese neighbor down the road. Soon he’s spending less and less time at home with Martina and almost no time at all on his work. Eventually, Benno shows up demanding that he complete the manuscript—or else.
An amiable and good-humored take on an old story, with an interesting West vs. East slant that enlivens what could have been some very stale city-slicker clichés.Pub Date: March 4, 2003
ISBN: 1-58234-179-6
Page Count: 221
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2002
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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