Gerber writes powerfully about the twists of family life in stories crisply told: heartfelt dispatches from our ambiguous...
This sixth collection from Gerber, with seven novels (Anna in the Afterlife, 2002, etc.) and four books of memoir to her credit, offers a baker’s dozen about women in peril, love, and grief.
In the title story, a woman at first welcomes getting a call from a former writing program classmate—until he turns out to be on the skids: the piece builds in suspense, ending with the narrator looking over her shoulder, not answering her phone, fearful of this wreck of a man. “I Don’t Believe This” continues a theme of terror at what a man might do—in this case detailing graphically the danger posed by a rejected husband whose wife has gone with their sons to a shelter for battered women. “Tell Me Your Secret” deals once again with a young woman in a writing program, this time preparing for an illicit overnight at a professor’s party. News of her grandmother’s death forces her to look at every choice she makes in a new light. As a once formidable mother-in-law, mellowed with age, pleads with her daughter-in-law to visit more often, the younger woman realizes (“Latitude”) that power in the relationship has shifted to her, while a confident young wife is undone by the sight of her uncle’s body at his funeral (“We Know That Your Hearts Are Heavy”), and “A Daughter of My Own” captures the tension when a mother comes, unbidden, to “help out” with a firstborn baby. Less successful is “My Suicides,” a sketchy piece that reprises the suicide of the abusive husband from “I Don’t Believe This” and ends with a “Survivors-of-Suicide” meeting. “Dogs Bark,” finally, is a nightmarish and ominous tale of how the troubles between neighbors can erupt into violence.
Gerber writes powerfully about the twists of family life in stories crisply told: heartfelt dispatches from our ambiguous time.Pub Date: Jan. 24, 2005
ISBN: 0-86538-113-5
Page Count: 200
Publisher: Ontario Review
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2005
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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