A somber revenge tale, but fronted by a protagonist both absorbing and sublimely complicated.
A debut thriller tells the story of Shame, who survives a savage beating with a scarred, physically stronger body and a new mindset to seek justice for all who are persecuted.
School life for Shame, whose birth name is never revealed, was abominable. Peers’ baseless animosity and relentless torment seem derived from Shame’s androgyny. When Shame embraces the students’ epithet, The Shamed, by spray-painting it on a jacket, the resultant pummeling and mutilation leave the protagonist near death. Awakening from a coma two years later, the now-adult is heavily scarred and, as an unwitting guinea pig in experimental surgery, has most bones fused with a “special metal.” Though asserting an unemotional state, Shame heads to Baltimore to find Cassidy “Cassie” Peterson, an old friend and possible love in rehab at the time of Shame’s attack. Chance sightings of two of Shame’s assailants, however, open the door for retribution and torture. Shame even murders someone to avoid identification, and the trip to see Cassie eventually turns into evasion, especially with feds investigating those tortures. Shame makes a few friends but mostly encounters degenerates, the worst of the bunch turning out to be gangsters who think Shame killed one of their own. Finding Cassie and working up the courage to approach her takes a back seat when the thugs kidnap someone Shame’s just maybe grown to care about. Though Shame’s first-person perspective assumes reader sympathy is a certainty, some may not empathize so easily. The initial murder isn’t justified like the assailants’ comeuppance, and a few good people, by mere association, get the brunt of Shame’s intermingling with violent people. The protagonist, however, is fascinating, metal-infused bones putting Shame on the same level as bigger foes. Similarly, gender in the story is rightly meaningless when it comes to defining a person, even if nearly every male character is repulsive. The plot, at times, hits a standstill, readers essentially waiting as Shame decides when finally to reunite with Cassie. Nevertheless, Shame, who develops an attachment or two, is markedly less cold as the story progresses, while an implication of psychological illness—hearing voices of the dead—opens avenues of story possibilities. The cliffhanger ending is nothing short of electric.
A somber revenge tale, but fronted by a protagonist both absorbing and sublimely complicated.Pub Date: Feb. 19, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-578-16606-3
Page Count: 246
Publisher: Dreams Into Reality Publishing
Review Posted Online: June 28, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
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
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
