A well-told story, but readers’ sympathy for the central character will wane somewhat due to her abundant good looks, charm,...
A young Mennonite girl’s life turns upside down when a painful family secret is revealed in Thomas’ (A Weekend with Frances, 2016, etc.) novel.
Victoria Grace Unruh, born in 1960 to middle-aged parents, is the youngest of four children in a Mennonite family living in Indiana. She barely knows her two older brothers; her older sister, Lucinda, nicknamed “Lucy,” is an unpredictable “red-headed bundle of turbulence.” Her father, Herman, a rural mailman, isn’t very bright but is “everything I ever needed him to be,” says Victoria. His kind, compassionate qualities endear him to all—except his wrathful, rigid wife. Ada, Victoria’s mother, devotes herself to the Mennonite Women’s Fellowship, but at home, she’s sharp-edged and unloving. As Victoria grows up as a Mennonite amid the loosening social strictures of the 1960s, she argues with her mother over boys (Ada believes that all men are loathsome) and sometimes feels the difference between herself and non-Mennonite kids. But her life is mostly pleasant, consisting of church, singing, good grades, and cute boyfriends at her private high school. Her peaceful stability explodes, however, when Lucy develops paranoid schizophrenia. During an angry rant, Lucy tells teenage Victoria a shameful secret, causing the younger girl to re-evaluate all she knows about herself. Although the main story is Victoria’s, Thomas gives the novel depth with flashbacks to the parents’ early lives, courtship, and marriage—an unromantic but moving saga of disappointment and lowered expectations. Herman emerges as a figure of great emotional intelligence whose humble self-criticism (“I’m just an old bumble-head”) is heartbreaking. With self-denying nobility, Herman frames the aforementioned secret in a way that allows Victoria to feel blessed by God. It’s problematic, though, that Victoria is already such a paragon: “You’re a winner. You’re a star….You’re extraordinary,” says Victoria’s best friend, Judy Prentiss; “Everything’s always been so easy for you….You’re so smart and so pretty,” says Lucy. As a result, the suffering of those in Victoria’s orbit is more compelling than her own, as it’s deeper, harder to fix, and more heart-wrenching.
A well-told story, but readers’ sympathy for the central character will wane somewhat due to her abundant good looks, charm, intelligence, and talent.Pub Date: July 5, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-9910749-8-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Aug. 19, 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.
