A pleasure to read. And though the Captain might have other plans, we’d like to know of Eddie’s further adventures.
Tin soldiers and Secretariat comin’: A whip-smart, funny shaggy dog story about dissolute life in the Watergate era.
The setup could be Elmore Leonard by way of a somewhat more mature J.D. Salinger: Messer’s protagonist, who would appear to be more than a little like him, is a veteran of Woodstock who hasn’t been able to handle much since. A college dropout, Eddie Sacks is planning his next move while Nixon is planning his, and with about as much success. Part of his plan is to get out from under the sway of his father, the Captain, with whom Eddie shares an affinity for the racetrack, cigars and a good drink. “One thing about the track,” Eddie tells us early on, “it was the only place I could get along with the Captain.” Indeed, in his Zeus and Cronus moments, Eddie finds himself wishing nothing but the worst for old Pops, whom everyone else loves. The Captain’s got other worries, though, and no end of schemes, the worst of them involving his shlimazel brother, Gene. Everyone, well, almost everyone, loves the Captain until things go awry, when he shows his true colors, grumping of Gene, “One fuck-up after another and I always have to pay for it.” Ah, but isn’t that what families are for? The caper, with its mobsters and mooks and high-concept crime, is a peg on which Messer can hang a lively tale of family feuding and the kind of talking past one another that always takes place when blood kin are involved, it seems, on which he layers an impressive amount of period detail—and detail, period—that’s exactly right, from the way ash falls from a cigar to the champion racehorse Secretariat’s “blanket of daisies” to the sights and sounds of that star-crossed year of our lord 1973.
A pleasure to read. And though the Captain might have other plans, we’d like to know of Eddie’s further adventures.Pub Date: June 7, 2013
ISBN: 978-1-930589-33-9
Page Count: 320
Publisher: BMA Press
Review Posted Online: Sept. 18, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2013
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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