A pleasing retreat into American pastoral life.
This nostalgic view of pastoral life on an Iowa farm delivers the warm fuzzies without sentimentality.
Cal and Helen Earlywine have spent a lifetime working the land and raising a family, but tragedy has shadowed much of their lives. Twenty-six years ago, their son Tom was struck by lightning and killed while helping Cal plant a field. The tragedy complicated an already fraught relationship between Cal and his remaining son, Wayne, an artist who showed no interest in taking up the family’s farming business. Now, with Cal’s ailing hip threatening his mobility and his mood, Helen is having second thoughts about the once-jovial man she married. Enter Nancy Bannister, town booster extraordinaire. Her plans to build a revenue-generating corn maze on the parcel of land where Tom died could either be the poultice Cal needs to begin to finally come to terms with his son’s death or an abomination that disgraces Tom’s legacy. A picturesque yet sober look at a quickly retreating American archetype, Kasten’s (Ten Small Beds, 2011, etc.) portrayal of rural life ably situates readers in Cal and Helen’s world, often skillfully shifting between their perspectives to untwine a thorny issue. But the narrative often lacks the gravitas to really connect to readers. Throughout, Cal and Helen contend with a variety of obstacles—with varying degrees of success—that have the potential to derail their comfortable lives, but independent of the outcomes, the momentum remains as flat as the land the Earlywines have cultivated for generations. Still, there’s plenty to like here. The bristly relationship between Cal and Wayne is well-articulated, the evolution of Nancy’s corn maze from idea to reality is fun to watch, and Helen’s struggle to come to terms with her beloved older sister’s Alzheimer’s is both illuminating and touching.
A pleasing retreat into American pastoral life.Pub Date: July 11, 2013
ISBN: 978-0983195931
Page Count: 324
Publisher: Kate Kasten
Review Posted Online: Sept. 26, 2013
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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