A political thriller that stretches itself too far in pursuit of a worthy goal.
A debut novel traces a turbulent campaign season in an alternate America where the religious far right has formed its own party and government censorship abounds.
In the mid-1990s, Joseph Billson, a charismatic reverend, begins an alternative to the GOP: the GOD Party, focused on bringing the country under Christian law. The Republican administration, looking to keep power, engages with the new party by increasing the censorship of, broadly, any anti-Christian act: protests, pornography, and violence. Walter Stanquist, the head of the FBI, is tasked with covertly suppressing anything anti-Christian and ends up imprisoning his neighbor, a writer named Amy Flintridge, after she publicly speaks out against the government. This angers his wife, Muffy, who is aghast at her husband’s dismissal of free speech. Amy is put into solitary confinement as a political prisoner in a remote facility, unable to communicate with her friends or family; the media, fearful of political retribution, drop the Flintridge story. In her cell, Amy explores the limits of her consciousness, playing with ideas of language, building a life out of words. Unbeknown to her, this mental wandering eventually lets her send a message to her sons, Hans and Ted, who, before her incarceration, implanted a small computer in her gumline. Her short message includes the word lilacs, which prompts the brothers to start a surreal, highly effective protest movement against government repression using the flowers and random words. Caught in the middle of all this is Marti Blaydocus, a Chicago area reporter who becomes close with Billson’s father, embedded in his son’s campaign, and also chases the Flintridge story. As Marti discovers more and more, she stumbles on secrets that threaten to undo not only Billson, but also the reigning Republicans. Throughout the wide web of the plot, Requist’s characterizations are mostly flat, with the cast members sticking to predetermined scripts, though players such as Billson’s father do show a surprising amount of range. And in Amy’s stream-of-consciousness musings, the author is able to let loose and deftly escape the confines of conventional prose that define the rest of the novel. Requist’s provocative premise is intriguing, her lucid theme of fighting censorship is noble, and her astute observations about modern politics are prescient. But, eventually, the many tangled threads of the elaborate plot overwhelm these messages.
A political thriller that stretches itself too far in pursuit of a worthy goal.Pub Date: Oct. 20, 2000
ISBN: 978-1-58721-929-0
Page Count: 252
Publisher: 1st Book Library
Review Posted Online: May 20, 2017
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
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
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