A devilishly crafted psychological thriller fusing mad science with desperate people in the grip of physical agony.
A man plagued by chronic pain turns to an experimental “miracle surgery.”
Thornley’s (The Rabbit, 2018) medical thriller taps into the hopelessness felt when physical pain becomes a psychological nightmare. For Greg Owens, getting out of bed is an arduous and excruciating daily challenge. Ever since he fell from a ladder during a roofing job seven years ago, back pain has been constant, contributing to a divorce, estrangement from his 3-year-old daughter, and diminished capacity as a construction foreman. When a radical experimental treatment at a remote clinic is suggested, Greg decides to investigate the promising possibilities at the facility rather than relying on questionable street drugs. The physician in charge of the trial is the nearly 60-year-old Dr. Dante Menta (fittingly named “Dr. D. Menta”), whose controversial pain-elimination therapy involves the injection of liquid nitrogen into the spinal column. His surgical techniques have incrementally graduated from animals of assorted sizes to the new human trials, which Greg and other patients, all in varying degrees of severe pain, are about to embark on. Once Greg becomes a patient, he is in good company with a ward full of other nosy subjects and a compassionate, motherly nurse named Roberta. She begins to suspect foul play when she discovers some of the treatment’s undesirable effects. Thornley, a software architect–turned-novelist, displays a knack for sustaining a simmering plot and really ratchets things up once the full grisly consequences of Menta’s seemingly foolproof experiment begin to emerge. The doctor’s transformation from creepily concerned advocate into mad-scientist mode with a zombified, pain-free patient roster to contend with is both horrifying and electrifying. Fans of uncomplicated medical thrillers will find much to savor here even if the author, a writer to watch, tends to lay on the graphic, gory details a bit thick. In the dog experiments, the animals run themselves into walls because they feel no pain and are delusional. Menta’s human patients begin pulling out their own fingernails, burning themselves, and gouging out their eyeballs.
A devilishly crafted psychological thriller fusing mad science with desperate people in the grip of physical agony.Pub Date: Jan. 8, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-979851-20-6
Page Count: 282
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Jan. 31, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 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
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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