A BLADE OF GRASS

Name: A BLADE OF GRASS
Author: Lewis DeSoto
ISBN: 0-06-055426-6

by Lewis DeSoto ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 19, 2003

First-novelist DeSoto does not allow the wretched Märit even an epiphany as he piles on with a vengeance. A dreary tale of...

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A ponderous debut details the Job-like sufferings of two young women (one black, one white) on a farm in apartheid South Africa of the 1970s.

The remote farm is in a border area targeted by guerillas. The owner is Ben Laurens, a recent arrival from England, but the focus is on his young bride Märit. A city girl who has just lost both parents, she worries about her ability to handle farm life. Far more self-confident is the 18-year-old Tembi, whose mother Grace is the maid. They live in the kraal with the farmworkers. Tembi is close to the earth; her secret garden contains seeds sent by her father, a gold miner. The land, described with a lulling reverence, is as much of the context here as apartheid. The first tragedy is the death of Grace, killed in a hit-and-run; next Ben is killed by a guerilla land-mine. Märit, needy and fearful, invites Tembi into her house and her bed, clinging to her for comfort. Then, in a barely credible makeover, she goes native (bare feet, a sarong, the works) and tells the farmworkers she is now the boss. Her authority is short-lived. All her cattle are stolen. As the land turns into a war zone, her black workers leave (but not the loyal Tembi), followed by her white neighbors. Locusts devour her vegetables. An itinerant black man, Khoza, fixes their pump, but can he be trusted? Märit, still the same hand-wringing lost soul, can’t decide whether to shoot him or sleep with him; her foolishness seriously upsets Tembi. A three-way tussle ends with the arrival of more visitors: first, white soldiers, then black soldiers on horseback, who conscript Khoza and Tembi. Märit, her house looted, her farm ravaged, drowns herself in the river.

First-novelist DeSoto does not allow the wretched Märit even an epiphany as he piles on with a vengeance. A dreary tale of plunder and loss, uninflected by humor or nuance.

Pub Date: Sept. 19, 2003

ISBN: 0-06-055426-6

Page Count: 400

Publisher: Ecco/HarperCollins

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2003

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

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THE CATCHER IN THE RYE

by J.D. Salinger ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 15, 1951

A strict report, worthy of sympathy.

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A violent surfacing of adolescence (which has little in common with Tarkington's earlier, broadly comic, Seventeen) has a compulsive impact.

"Nobody big except me" is the dream world of Holden Caulfield and his first person story is down to the basic, drab English of the pre-collegiate. For Holden is now being bounced from fancy prep, and, after a vicious evening with hall- and roommates, heads for New York to try to keep his latest failure from his parents. He tries to have a wild evening (all he does is pay the check), is terrorized by the hotel elevator man and his on-call whore, has a date with a girl he likes—and hates, sees his 10 year old sister, Phoebe. He also visits a sympathetic English teacher after trying on a drunken session, and when he keeps his date with Phoebe, who turns up with her suitcase to join him on his flight, he heads home to a hospital siege. This is tender and true, and impossible, in its picture of the old hells of young boys, the lonesomeness and tentative attempts to be mature and secure, the awful block between youth and being grown-up, the fright and sickness that humans and their behavior cause the challenging, the dramatization of the big bang. It is a sorry little worm's view of the off-beat of adult pressure, of contemporary strictures and conformity, of sentiment….

A strict report, worthy of sympathy.

Pub Date: June 15, 1951

ISBN: 0316769177

Page Count: -

Publisher: Little, Brown

Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011

Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1951

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

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Holden Caulfield: Forever Young

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JURASSIC PARK

by Michael Crichton ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 7, 1990

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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.