Cunningham (At Home at the End of the World, 1990) adds a gay spin to the dysfunctional family genre with a novel that typically blames Mom and Dad, especially Dad, for everything that goes wrong. Moving through time with the speed of a spinning calendar in an old movie, Cunningham takes the Stassos family from 1935 to 2035, when Jamal, the only surviving grandson, scatters the ashes of Uncle Will Stassos and his lover Harry on the ocean. In between, the Stassoses experience all the psychic and physical ills that afflict the American family in the late 20th century—ills that, with few exceptions (AIDS being the rare one), are caused by the family itself, beginning in Greece with the beatings eight-year-old Constantine Stassos receives from his father. As soon as he can, Constantine flees to the US, where, in 1949, he meets Mary, daughter of Italian immigrants. The two soon marry; three children, Susan, Billy, and Zoe are born; and a lucky meeting with a fellow Greek, also working in construction, leads to affluence and middle- class respectability—but not to happiness, as the family rapidly falls apart. Mary increasingly avoids Constantine, who in turn seeks comfort from adolescent Susan, who as soon as possible marries Todd, whose major fault seems to be that he's decent, works hard, and wants to help others. Billy fights with his father, changes his name to Will, and comes out of the closet. Baby Zoe heads to New York, where she takes drugs, hangs out with Drag Queen Cassandra (the only credible character here), and bears Jamal, whose father is an African-American. Mary and Constantine divorce, but life won't get much better for them or their kids. Only Will will find true love. Stock characters and equally stock situations do little to help a breathless tale that, despite its gay sympathies, is just an old-fashioned melodrama in contemporary drag. (First printing of 75,000; Author tour)
Pub Date: April 1, 1995
ISBN: 0-374-18113-6
Page Count: 464
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1995
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.
A violent surfacing of adolescence (which has little in common with Tarkington's earlier, broadly comic, Seventeen) has a compulsive impact.
"Nobody big except me" is the dream world of Holden Caulfield and his first person story is down to the basic, drab English of the pre-collegiate. For Holden is now being bounced from fancy prep, and, after a vicious evening with hall- and roommates, heads for New York to try to keep his latest failure from his parents. He tries to have a wild evening (all he does is pay the check), is terrorized by the hotel elevator man and his on-call whore, has a date with a girl he likes—and hates, sees his 10 year old sister, Phoebe. He also visits a sympathetic English teacher after trying on a drunken session, and when he keeps his date with Phoebe, who turns up with her suitcase to join him on his flight, he heads home to a hospital siege. This is tender and true, and impossible, in its picture of the old hells of young boys, the lonesomeness and tentative attempts to be mature and secure, the awful block between youth and being grown-up, the fright and sickness that humans and their behavior cause the challenging, the dramatization of the big bang. It is a sorry little worm's view of the off-beat of adult pressure, of contemporary strictures and conformity, of sentiment….
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.Pub Date: June 15, 1951
ISBN: 0316769177
Page Count: -
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1951
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
APPRECIATIONS
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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