An infuriating, frightening, and compassionate story of abuse.
A vulnerable 14-year-old girl becomes the victim of a beloved teacher in Levine’s debut novel.
Five years ago, when Alexandra “Alex” Geller was 9 years old, her mother died suddenly from a brain aneurysm. Alex’s father, Dr. Richard Geller, was emotionally ill-equipped to deal with raising Alex and her two younger brothers, Jason and Ari. Enter biology teacher Paula Hanover, who’s beautiful, fun-loving, and rebellious; she befriends Alex, who’s a student in her class. Paula praises the teenager, offers her guidance, and gradually becomes the single most important person in her life. To Alex, Paula is a parental figure who fills the excruciating void left by her mother’s death, and for the first time in many years, Alex feels that she’s not alone. Paula, in turn, plays upon the young girl’s insecurities and her need for validation and love, manipulating her through a combination of reward and punishment. She begins driving Alex home at the end of the school day and shares inappropriately intimate details about her own life. She also slaps Alex, painfully squeezes the back of her neck, and eventually starts spanking her. Alex accepts all this as proof that Paula loves her; early on, she begins keeping a list (“Ways I Know Paula Likes Me”) that she adds to throughout the novel. The very worst punishment for her is when Paula periodically freezes her out. The author, a marriage and family therapist, focuses on a subtler form of abuse than most readers will be accustomed to reading about. Alex is the articulate, first-person narrator of the tale; readers experience her obsession and emotional deconstruction from the inside, and it’s a chilling ride. Levine effectively weaves her cautionary tale by drawing from her years as a therapist dealing with “trauma stories.” Her deep understanding of “grooming” behavior—the process by which an abuser leads a victim into a dependent relationship—helps her to create a character that jumps off the page. Overall, this is an important addition to the discussion of abuse prevention and detection.
An infuriating, frightening, and compassionate story of abuse.Pub Date: Jan. 18, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-5355-1158-2
Page Count: 352
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Dec. 13, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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