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
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Dated sermonizing on career versus motherhood, and conflict driven by characters’ willed helplessness, sap this tale of...
Lifelong, conflicted friendship of two women is the premise of Hannah’s maudlin latest (Magic Hour, 2006, etc.), again set in Washington State.
Tallulah “Tully” Hart, father unknown, is the daughter of a hippie, Cloud, who makes only intermittent appearances in her life. Tully takes refuge with the family of her “best friend forever,” Kate Mularkey, who compares herself unfavorably with Tully, in regards to looks and charisma. In college, “TullyandKate” pledge the same sorority and major in communications. Tully has a life goal for them both: They will become network TV anchorwomen. Tully lands an internship at KCPO-TV in Seattle and finagles a producing job for Kate. Kate no longer wishes to follow Tully into broadcasting and is more drawn to fiction writing, but she hesitates to tell her overbearing friend. Meanwhile a love triangle blooms at KCPO: Hard-bitten, irresistibly handsome, former war correspondent Johnny is clearly smitten with Tully. Expecting rejection, Kate keeps her infatuation with Johnny secret. When Tully lands a reporting job with a Today-like show, her career shifts into hyperdrive. Johnny and Kate had started an affair once Tully moved to Manhattan, and when Kate gets pregnant with daughter Marah, they marry. Kate is content as a stay-at-home mom, but frets about being Johnny’s second choice and about her unrealized writing ambitions. Tully becomes Seattle’s answer to Oprah. She hires Johnny, which spells riches for him and Kate. But Kate’s buttons are fully depressed by pitched battles over slutwear and curfews with teenaged Marah, who idolizes her godmother Tully. In an improbable twist, Tully invites Kate and Marah to resolve their differences on her show, only to blindside Kate by accusing her, on live TV, of overprotecting Marah. The BFFs are sundered. Tully’s latest attempt to salvage Cloud fails: The incorrigible, now geriatric hippie absconds once more. Just as Kate develops a spine, she’s given some devastating news. Will the friends reconcile before it’s too late?
Dated sermonizing on career versus motherhood, and conflict driven by characters’ willed helplessness, sap this tale of poignancy.Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2008
ISBN: 978-0-312-36408-3
Page Count: 496
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2007
BOOK TO SCREEN
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