A 30-year-old academic takes over her best friend's life in this playful second novel from Dunaway (the paperback Hungry Women, 1990)—a modestly amusing variation on the Cinderella tale. Recently separated from her unremarkable grad-student husband, slaving daily in a library in pursuit of her own master's degree, wholesome Luna Devon has had the bad luck to land the widely published, brilliant, beautiful, sexy Wren Caldwell as her closest friend. Holder of three master's degrees, Wren has already begun to realize her dream of founding her own women's magazine by accepting a job at a trendy southern California periodical—a job offered sight-unseen on the strength of her published work. Wren's plans are cut short, however, when an unstable acquaintance shoots Wren, Luna, her cat and herself with a Smith & Wesson. When Luna wakes up in the hospital to discover that she's the only survivor, she takes a hard look at her boring life and decides that Wren wouldn't mind if she helped herself to hers. Taking Wren's notes and belongings with her, Luna impulsively travels south to accept Wren's job as feature writer for Orange Coast Today. There, she finds herself instantly overwhelmed as she attempts to interview a woman who murdered her husband, accepts a date with the man who bought the movie rights to the story, and begins sparring with Wren's shady- looking husband, who turns up after a two-year prison term and moves into Luna's apartment with his cat, his parrot, his beautiful deaf lover, and his constant, apparently illegal wheeling and dealing. Soon enough, Luna is forced to admit that she lacks Wren's talent for grabbing everything she wants—but, being Luna, she's finally willing enough to settle for taking what she needs. Lightweight fantasy with flashes of wit—more in Luna's league than Wren's.
Pub Date: Nov. 18, 1992
ISBN: 0-446-51702-X
Page Count: 464
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 1992
BOOK REVIEW
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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