Contrived zaniness, short on plot and character.
In this fiction debut from Notaro (Autobiography of a Fat Bride, 2003, etc.), a quirky freelance writer from Arizona relocates to Spaulding, Wash., with her professor husband and enters the local “Sewer Pipe Queen” pageant to make friends.
It does not take long after arriving in her new town for Maye to realize she is not in Phoenix anymore. A lovely, liberal enclave with draconian recycling laws, cops hooked on organic donuts and a fitness-minded mailman who jogs his route, Spaulding is also, she realizes, difficult to penetrate for a newcomer who works from home. Friendly and full of good intentions, the chubby writer initially blows it with her husband Charlie’s colleagues after accidentally exposing herself at a party at the Dean’s house. Her subsequent efforts to meet people go awry as well. There is the band of wiccans who want to bathe her, a militant vegetarian who exiles her from his club after he catches her tucking into a juicy steak and a seemingly normal bookstore clerk who goes nuts after one glass of wine too many. Then Maye finds out about the Sewer Pipe Queen. An odd competition where “talent” and originality matter more than beauty, Maye decides that winning will boost her reputation, but only if she can find a former queen to sponsor her. Using her reporting skills, she tracks down the long-lost legendary queen of all Sewer Pipe Queens—Ruby Spicer. Now a crazy old bat raising dogs on the outskirts of town, the hard drinking Ruby is, to say the least, not a traditional mentor. But the two woman bond, with Maye helping to uncover the sad truth as to why Ruby left town. Ruby in turn coaches Maye on a showstopper of an act, in which Maye dances and lip-syncs to an 80s-era Pat Benatar song, accompanied on piano by her Australian Sheepdog Mickey. Really. The book has funny gags, but it feels more like a collection of silly situations that a cohesive novel.
Contrived zaniness, short on plot and character.Pub Date: May 29, 2007
ISBN: 1-4000-6501-1
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Villard
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2007
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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