A contemporary girl-meets-boy story that taps into an age-old lament by women: Men. Can’t live with ’em. Can’t live without...
Mathieu’s (The Next to Last Drink, 2014, etc.) novel explores the evolutionary concepts of masculinity and femininity, the societal norms that shape us, and some good, old-fashioned romance.
Nora Bookbinder is a flinty go-getter of a gallery owner in Maine. She lives a happily single existence, helping her ailing father, Eugene; walking on the beach and discussing life with her best friend, Emma; and feeling that most men have a violent streak and that she’s better off without them. But when an earthquake hits (in an apt metaphor for the havoc it wreaks on the protagonist’s life), seismologist Drew Hollister comes to town. He’s smart, capable, and interesting, which would be enough to turn any woman’s head. When he turns Nora’s, in spite of her well-crafted defenses, he not only taps into her passion but pierces her very sense of self. It’s a cataclysmic shock that leads to her skipping town for a vacation. As readers watch Nora grapple with what love means and what it does, Mathieu’s prose is often ponderous (“Drew was always on my mind, continually, like a compressor running in the background”), and scenes often shift from past to present with stop-and-start jerks. Also, Nora’s independence-at-any-cost persona and distrust of all male-female relationships can make her feel less than three-dimensional; it’s hard not to want her character to evolve, even as one roots for her to hang onto her feminist ideals. “I had become like ordinary women I had long criticized for succumbing to desire,” Nora tells readers. “Loving Drew had made me vulnerable.” Of course, that’s exactly what love does—and how it often brings about the best in people. That said, women who’ve dealt with similar conflicts in their own lives will want to cheer Nora on.
A contemporary girl-meets-boy story that taps into an age-old lament by women: Men. Can’t live with ’em. Can’t live without ’em.Pub Date: Sept. 22, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-5369-1081-0
Page Count: 290
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Nov. 22, 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
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