An unnerving but highly readable historical novel about a troubled teen.
Rollins’ (Good-Time Girl, 2019) historical novel tells the story of a troubled, talented English boy’s coming-of-age in the 1960s.
As a small child, George Carveth grows up on the Cornish coast surrounded by family, although some of his relatives disapprove of the ballet class that he attends: “Strange he was the only male child there. Some of the boys in the neighborhood didn’t want George playing football anymore, which was batty….The adults decided this ‘Frenchy dancing’ had gone far enough.” When his father gets an offer of a new job in London, his parents move to the city while 10-year-old George is sent to a posh boarding school. There, the other students make fun of his accent, and a bigoted member of the faculty takes exception to George’s partial Indian ancestry. He’s seemingly befriended by one of his schoolmasters, Mr. Wilburn, but the man quickly reveals his true intentions by asking George to dance naked for him. The teacher’s sexual abuse of the boy coincides with a split in George’s personality: the cautious, everyday George and the secretive “Shadow George,” which he sees as his “bad self." As Shadow George increasingly makes decisions for him, the 14-year-old dances on a lark before his classmates while "lightly clad," and makes aggressive advances toward younger students. One of his uncles, who recognizes George’s talent for singing, dancing, and impressions, encourages his parents to contact a talent scout, so George meets a pair of Americans named Jack and Jill Stuart. With their encouragement—particularly that of Jill, to whom the teenager takes a special fancy—George begins to hone his craft and embark on a career in entertainment. The 15-year-old continues to struggle with his confused sexual feelings as he pines for Jill and as Jack makes sexual overtures. As the boy reaches his later teens and success in the arts appears within reach, Shadow George threatens to cause more trouble. Over the course of this novel, Rollins’ prose is nimble and ornately textured, evoking the landscapes of Cornwall and London with painterly skill. Her characters are drawn even more finely, as each is revealed to be a knotted web of conflicting instincts and beliefs. Her treatment of sexuality—and the predatory advances of adults and older children—is particularly sharp. At one point, George reveals Wilburn’s actions to his older cousin Timmy, who says that he regularly exposes himself to a Norwegian sailor in exchange for a penny. The cousin remarks that there are “Odd ducks in the world…I’ve met a few. No one ever tells you.” Apart from these moments, however, the book has a very traditional feel; indeed, Rollins lays out her story at a leisurely pace that sometimes drags, and the plot’s shape is somewhat easy to predict. Still, Rollins has assembled an array of broken people who are compelling, even as they destroy one another, and she manages to capture a horrific side of humanity.
An unnerving but highly readable historical novel about a troubled teen.Pub Date: Feb. 6, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-79572-477-7
Page Count: 394
Publisher: Time Tunnel Media
Review Posted Online: July 25, 2019
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
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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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