An often resonant novel about choice, regret and absolution.
Upon moving from the East Coast to rural Colorado, a divorcé parses the complexities of love in Meyerle’s (Bread of Shame, 2010) ruminative novel.
“There are many things which only the heart can grasp,” Jeff Stillman acknowledges as he reaches his twilight years. Indeed, his heart has long been a source of mystification for him. His love for his wife, Kathryn—the mother of his five children—is far from simple or wholly devoted, and it shares space in his heart with his love for Julia, a compassionate beauty and the wife of his best friend, Dean. When Jeff’s marriage finally fails—due, in part, to his extreme focus on his Manhattan law career—he starts fresh in quiet, sparse Kiowa, Colo. The home he purchases there, sight unseen, had once belonged to Julia and Dean, who founded an educational ranch nearby for disabled children. Jeff had always admired their altruism, but he’d always “blithely pursued the good life,” responding defensively to the notion that he might also practice such generosity: “Did that mean he and others should be rebuked for not being like them? No, he thinks.” His experiences in Kiowa, where he must rely on his neighbors to survive, force a profound change of outlook. The book’s central love triangle, and its idealization of rural living as a means to enlightenment, may appear prosaic, and some of Jeff’s observations (such as “It is time to be true to himself”) and predilections (including his tendency to get teary-eyed) verge on the trite. But the novel, despite its skirting of clichés, is also deeply insightful about love, human interaction, solitude, and even the ways in which America’s current economic and political landscapes affect people’s interdependency. Much of its success comes from the characters’ unpredictability and its intricate structure; the chapters alternate between modern-day Kiowa and slide backward from 2008 to 1969, depicting in reverse the gradual cracks in a marriage and a life’s mistakes.
An often resonant novel about choice, regret and absolution.Pub Date: May 21, 2012
ISBN: 978-1453678107
Page Count: 316
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Oct. 31, 2013
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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