Achieves the neat trick of presenting moral values in a persuasive and uplifting way without being preachy or boring.
In this novel by a 9/11 survivor, chance plays a major role in the lives of two best friends—but character plays an even bigger one.
In 1989, promising college student Tobias Hillyer has just arrived home to spend Christmas with his condescending father, alcoholic mother and Simeon, his gifted and artistic younger brother. After a sudden and tragic accident, Tobias becomes his brother’s caretaker and, instead of returning to school, finds his academic future shredded. In contrast, Martin, his former college roommate and best friend, seems showered with good fortune, landing a high-paying job after college with Lehman Brothers in New York. The men keep in touch through a shared passion for tennis. Tobias, stuck in a low-paying job, marries Carmela, a psychiatric nurse he met as a result of the accident. Martin marries Valerie, and the years tick by. The couples, and eventually their children, stay close friends, despite the discrepancy in their incomes. On a whim, Tobias buys a Mega Millions lottery ticket and wins the jackpot—suddenly everything is reversed; Tobias and Carmela live out their fantasies while Martin faces bankruptcy. The allegedly lucky couple faces countless problems—kidnappers, acquaintances begging for money, jealousy and lack of trust. Still, Tobias has a guiding belief in what is truly important, making his story one of triumph rather than defeat. Aside from an occasional overabundance of “telling”—details from the wedding and honeymoon read like journal entries—the strong sense of story and pace makes this an eminently readable and inspiring narrative. Duval’s earnest, likable characters possess an inner strength they must put into play in moments of struggle. The author adds suspense by intimating how the characters may be impacted by the eventual terrorist attack on World Trade Center.
Achieves the neat trick of presenting moral values in a persuasive and uplifting way without being preachy or boring.Pub Date: March 15, 2011
ISBN: 978-1604945201
Page Count: 343
Publisher: Wheatmark
Review Posted Online: July 26, 2011
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.
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
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
APPRECIATIONS
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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