Rich with wit, Pavlova’s only novel is a masterful sendup of high society.
A comedy of manners written in 19th-century Russia.
By day, Cecily is “so used to wearing her mind in a corset that she felt it no more than she did the silk undergarment that she took off only at night.” She is a good daughter, impeccably refined, perfectly prepared for high society. This is mid-19th-century Russia, but it could almost as easily be Regency England. Social strictures are stringently maintained. Cecily is of marriageable age; she may be too refined to even recognize her own desires, but her mother, Vera Vladimirovna, would like to see her married to the eligible, and wealthy, Prince Victor. Cecily’s closest friend, Olga, has her own eyes set on Victor—a match Olga’s mother would very much like to encourage. There’s also Dmitry Ivachinsky, a well-behaved but insufficiently moneyed young man. But with the right amount of prodding—by just the right person—Dmitry Ivachinsky might just stake a claim on Cecily, leaving Prince Victor open for Olga. Refined as she is, Cecily is blind to these machinations. It’s only at night that Cecily’s mind becomes unfettered, that her imagination can expand. Each chapter concludes with the end of a day; at each ending, the prose slips neatly into poetry, reflecting the state of Cecily’s mind. Pavlova, who completed this, her only novel, in 1848, was reviled by many of her Russian contemporaries. She had the distinct misfortune of writing at a time when the very idea of a woman writer was at best considered laughable and at worst monstrous. One of her contemporaries wrote that, in Pavlova, “there is nothing serious, profound, true, and sincere.” He couldn’t have been more wrong. Her only novel (she mostly wrote poetry) is brimful with wit and with sharp observations of the class in which she was raised. Pavlova has Jane Austen’s fine eye for social manners and hypocrisies even if she doesn’t quite maintain Austen’s level of subtlety. It’s possible that her own bitterness about her world sometimes thwarts the artfulness of the novel. She writes of Cecily, “Her soul was so highly polished, her understanding so confused, her natural talents so overorganized and mutilated by the unsparing way that she had been brought up that every problem of life perplexed and scared her.”
Rich with wit, Pavlova’s only novel is a masterful sendup of high society.Pub Date: Aug. 6, 2019
ISBN: 978-0-231-19079-4
Page Count: 160
Publisher: Columbia Univ.
Review Posted Online: May 11, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2019
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
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