A latter-day oater, of some interest to fans of the genre.
Cliven Bundy, nothin’. Real Western ranchers pay their taxes—but kick up a fuss when they have to, as McGarrity’s modern Western has it.
Moving the intergenerational saga begun in Hard Country (2012) into the near present, McGarrity serves up a tough but tender cowboy who wants nothing more than to keep to himself out in the Tularosa country of New Mexico. Matt Kerney has been beaten up in love and war. Worse still, he’s about to come face to face with the Air Force, which has been buzzing his spread. Says Matt: “Just tell your general or whoever is in charge of the flyboys to pay me for my two dead ponies.” Says the lackey, you betcha, but without conviction, for it turns out the feds want his place to expand nearby White Sands Missile Range. If this part of the program sounds familiar, it’s because Ed Abbey hit on it with more dramatic force half a century ago in his novel Fire on the Mountain. What McGarrity adds is a finer-grained sense of place and of attachment to New Mexico; when a rancher paterfamilias intones “Don’t let them on our land” anent the Air Force minions, the reader will have already developed a good understanding of what ties those people to a dry and dusty place. A former sheriff, he also has a good way of dealing with the politics of lowland New Mexico and of hierarchical organizations, whether it be Matt’s subsequent misadventures with the ag-extension crowd or a descendant’s bumpy path through the Vietnam-era military. The story lacks much tension, certainly as compared to its own predecessor in the saga, but it has a certain bucolic charm: “After a long day working them, I used to love to come out here in the cool of the evening and see my ponies lazing in the pasture. God, they were as pretty as they come.”
A latter-day oater, of some interest to fans of the genre.Pub Date: May 17, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-525-95325-8
Page Count: 592
Publisher: Dutton
Review Posted Online: March 29, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2016
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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