A slightly contrived but ultimately enjoyable thriller set in the shadowy world of medical experimentation.
An American expatriate in Thailand stumbles on a doctor’s bizarre genetic experiments in this debut novel.
After widower Benton Sims retired from his career as a Washington, D.C., intelligence analyst, he decided to move to Thailand. He spends his days hanging around the expat pub in Prajawan, drinking margaritas, swapping stories with the local transplants, and pining for his dead wife, Sylvia. There, he watches Siri perform; she’s the frontwoman of the Exploding Heads who hails from a tribal village in the Golden Triangle. Then, out of the blue, Siri disappears. Benton learns the rock singer had been a critic of the drug trials conducted among her people, the marginalized Palin, and that this has forced her to go underground. Benton seeks out Pierre Montha Bulsani, the physician who conducted the trials, but he unwittingly becomes a test subject himself. As the drugs begin to change Benton in strange and unexpected ways, he is drawn ever deeper into Pierre’s mysterious realm, where dead people turn out to be alive, the living are in danger of becoming dead, and the full, terrible potential of Thailand’s hidden plants may unlock the ancient, untapped potential of humanity. So much for a quiet retirement on the beach. Mani tells his story in taut, highly descriptive prose, capturing his Thai setting’s cornucopia of sights and tastes: One character sees “clusters of pimpled red lichees whose insides he remembered as soft and translucent, tangy-sweet and throat-tickling, and next to them were their scrumptious cousins the dumpling-like longans, and then bunches of thorny rambutans, their flavor acrid like over-ripened grapes.” The players are given elaborate backstories, and the thriller’s interests are varied and ambitious. Even so, the plot feels a bit shapeless at times, as though the author is trying to cram a lot of distinct components into one slightly cumbersome structure. But fans of more literary-tinged genre offerings like those of Chris Abani or John le Carré will enjoy Benton’s strange—even phantasmagoric—adventures in Thailand. Replete with questions regarding medical ethics and technologies, the book serves as the first volume of a trilogy.
A slightly contrived but ultimately enjoyable thriller set in the shadowy world of medical experimentation.Pub Date: Aug. 21, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-950743-10-0
Page Count: 266
Publisher: Calumet Editions
Review Posted Online: Nov. 14, 2019
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
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.
Sisters work together to solve a child-abandonment case.
Ellie and Julia Cates have never been close. Julia is shy and brainy; Ellie gets by on charm and looks. Their differences must be tossed aside when a traumatized young girl wanders in from the forest into their hometown in Washington. The sisters’ professional skills are put to the test. Julia is a world-renowned child psychologist who has lost her edge. She is reeling from a case that went publicly sour. Though she was cleared of all wrongdoing, Julia’s name was tarnished, forcing her to shutter her Beverly Hills practice. Ellie Barton is the local police chief in Rain Valley, who’s never faced a tougher case. This is her chance to prove she is more than just a fading homecoming queen, but a scarcity of clues and a reluctant victim make locating the girl’s parents nearly impossible. Ellie places an SOS call to her sister; she needs an expert to rehabilitate this wild-child who has been living outside of civilization for years. Confronted with her professional demons, Julia once again has the opportunity to display her talents and salvage her reputation. Hannah (The Things We Do for Love, 2004, etc.) is at her best when writing from the girl’s perspective. The feral wolf-child keeps the reader interested long after the other, transparent characters have grown tiresome. Hannah’s torturously over-written romance passages are stale, but there are surprises in store as the sisters set about unearthing Alice’s past and creating a home for her.
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.Pub Date: March 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-345-46752-3
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2005
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