In a disappointing if suspenseful sequel to Ablow’s Denial (1997), a forensic psychiatrist puts his life on the line to quell a revolt in a hospital for the criminally insane. Slasher-killer plastic-surgeon Dr. Trevor Lucas, declared insane by a jury, is sentenced to a Massachusetts mental hospital. Forensic psychiatrist Frank Clevenger, who helped bring Lucas to justice, knows that he didn’t kill anyone, but that, even so, the bad doctor is over the edge, having begun to mutilate his right arm, claiming that it’s possessed by the devil. Clevenger suffers from guilt about the verdict and tries to assuage it with Cynthia, a sweetly loving call girl. But before such healing can begin, Lucas leads a riot in a mental ward crammed with psychokillers, taking as hostages a handful of staffers, including a pregnant nurse. Lucas tosses the hideously butchered body of a female inmate out a fifth floor window and demands an escape helicopter—and a Catholic priest. After a Harvard psychologist sent to negotiate is stabbed to death, Lucas demands that Clevenger join him in the ward. Still guilt-racked but determined to help, Clevenger walks into the lion’s den hoping he can use his none-too-competent psychotherapeutic skills to heal Lucas. After proudly displaying his unbearably gruesome surgical battle with Satan, Lucas hints that his pathology may have something to do with his childhood in Baltimore. Clevenger halts a SWAT team raid on the hospital, then is released by Lucas to find whatever it is that’s been buried in Lucas’s past and with it cure him. If he doesn—t, Lucas will kill everyone in the ward, including himself, in 24 hours. Alas, just as Clevenger hops the first flight for Baltimore, Cynthia at his side, the psychokiller responsible for the deaths Lucas is being blamed for escapes from a cushy mental institution and goes on a rampage. Gore galore with wildly improbable plot twists, while Ablow’s worthy premise—that evil can be vanquished when empathic individuals confront their inner demons—fails to convince.
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1999
ISBN: 0-679-44212-X
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Pantheon
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1999
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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