Sympathetic characters propel a tense narrative.
Love and peril in Vichy, France.
Mary Jayne Gold, an American heiress who worked to rescue artists and intellectuals from Nazi-occupied France, has inspired Clayton’s spirited reimagining of those turbulent years, centered on the intrepid Nanée Gold—she can fly a plane!—and the handsome photojournalist Edouard Moss, a widower with an impossibly adorable young daughter. While Nanée and Edouard are fictional, Clayton embeds them in a world of real people: Marc Chagall, incredulous that his own government would turn against him; Pablo Picasso, who refused to leave Paris; Leonora Carrington, who comes to a gathering at Nanée’s Paris apartment; Lion Feuchtwanger, Hans Bellmer, and Max Ernst, among many others imprisoned at the Camp des Milles internment camp; and André Breton and his wife, Jacqueline, who hold a salon in the Villa Air-Bel, a safe house secured and paid for by Nanée, where fellow surrealists distract themselves in talk, dancing, and games. Although friends urge Nanée to go home, she has no interest in returning to a vacuous life as a socialite; instead, she insists, she “wanted to do something to help, the same as any decent person in this newly terrible world surely must.” Her chance comes in 1940, with the arrival of Varian Fry, sent by the American Emergency Rescue Committee to facilitate the escape of some 200 painters, composers, and writers in danger of Nazi persecution. Fry, realizing the benefit of Naneé’s willingness and wealth, makes her a courier—a postmistress—delivering messages throughout Paris. The plot thickens when Nanée becomes infatuated with Moss, who has been sent to Camp des Milles. Dressed in a couture suit, wearing diamonds and a dab of Chanel No. 5, Naneé devises her own mission to get him out. As their love affair intensifies, so do their desperate efforts to find Moss’ daughter and, somehow, survive the ominous world of war.
Sympathetic characters propel a tense narrative.Pub Date: Nov. 30, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-06-294-698-0
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Sept. 14, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2021
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
An uncompromising message, delivered via a gripping story with two engaging heroines.
An undergraduate at Brown University unearths the buried history of a Latine artist.
As in her bestselling debut, Olga Dies Dreaming (2022), Gonzalez shrewdly anatomizes racial and class hierarchies. Her bifurcated novel begins at a posh art-world party in 1985 as the title character, a Cuban American land and body artist, garners recognition that threatens the ego of her older, more famous husband, white minimalist sculptor Jack Martin. The story then shifts to Raquel Toro, whose working-class, Puerto Rican background makes her feel out of place among the “Art History Girls” who easily chat with professors and vacation in Europe. Nonetheless, in the spring of 1998, Raquel wins a prestigious summer fellowship at the Rhode Island School of Design, and her faculty adviser is enthusiastic about her thesis on Jack Martin, even if she’s not. Soon she’s enjoying the attentions of Nick Fitzsimmons, a well-connected, upper-crust senior. As Raquel’s story progresses, Anita’s first-person narrative acquires a supernatural twist following the night she falls from the window of their apartment —“jumped? or, could it be, pushed?”—but it’s grimly realistic in its exploration of her toxic relationship with Jack. (A dedication, “In memory of Ana,” flags the notorious case of sculptor Carl Andre, tried and acquitted for the murder of his wife, artist Ana Mendieta.) Raquel’s affair with Nick mirrors that unequal dynamic when she adapts her schedule and appearance to his whims, neglecting her friends and her family in Brooklyn. Gonzalez, herself a Brown graduate, brilliantly captures the daily slights endured by someone perceived as Other, from microaggressions (Raquel’s adviser refers to her as “Mexican”) to brutally racist behavior by the Art History Girls. While a vividly rendered supporting cast urges Raquel to be true to herself and her roots, her research on Martin leads to Anita’s art and the realization that she belongs to a tradition that’s been erased from mainstream art history.
An uncompromising message, delivered via a gripping story with two engaging heroines.Pub Date: March 5, 2024
ISBN: 9781250786210
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Flatiron Books
Review Posted Online: Nov. 18, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2023
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