Half Hollywood horror story, half dippy relationship saga: about two thirds of a good book.
Pseudo-epistolary novel that veers madly from dull to insightful to some competent middle-ground: a collaboration between TV writer/humorist Markoe and ex-Wall of Voodoo member Prieboy.
Assuming this is loosely autobiographical, the Markoe (It’s My F***ing Birthday, 2002, etc.) stand-in is Lisa, a lonely writer who spends her days locked in a windowless room with a bunch of pasty, chubby, socially challenged men as they bang out scripts for a mediocre sitcom. Prieboy’s alter ego is Grant, a once well-known ’80s rocker whose career slump has picked up recently with the buzzy success of his new play, Tommy! (Lee!): The Musical (Prieboy, not coincidentally, wrote a musical called White Trash Wins Lotto). After the two briefly chat following a performance of the show, they exchange e-mails and their respective creative output (Lisa’s books, Grant’s music). Their e-meet-cute develops into a virtual friendship through their invention of the titular game, in which they exchange true stories of pain each suffered at the hands of a respective former boy/girlfriend and award points based on levels of humiliation achieved. For Lisa, this is a desperate lifeline, pretty much the only thing that keeps her going. Grant, while engaged in the game, is doing it more for entertainment’s sake (at first, anyhow), encouraged by his scenemaker girlfriend Winnie. She’s mostly interested in hearing Lisa’s stories about her ex, who just happens to be a megalomaniacal filmmaker currently interested in buying the rights to Grant’s musical. Grant’s segments are engaging, in an LA-insider sort of way, limning the delicate power plays and phantom gossip that make up the daily life of the city’s creative community. If only the tale hadn’t kept shifting back to Lisa, a dull creation as manipulative as she is spineless, who evokes some slight sympathy from the reader only because she’s not malicious like Winnie.
Half Hollywood horror story, half dippy relationship saga: about two thirds of a good book.Pub Date: June 29, 2004
ISBN: 1-4000-6076-1
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Villard
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2004
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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