A decades-old, honest love story that never feels like merely a time capsule.
A Jersey Shore romance kindled in the swinging 1970s still smolders when old lovers come together in 2008.
Ronny Hopkins has long pined after his neighbor Katie Kline, the two young Belmar, New Jersey, natives often sharing time together over a little weed and “The White Album.” But Katie is a thoughtful girl, still affected by Robert F. Kennedy’s assassination in ’68, moved to explore the issues of the tumultuous era she is growing up in, and charmed by the adult allure of New York but also Ronny’s father. Although their adulterous affair is quickly recognized as a mistake, their liaison leaves behind a handful of nude Polaroids of Katie, which Ronny finds hidden away with his father’s dirty magazines. Yet when Ronny confronts her, the two make love. But a relationship seems untenable, as Katie stays busy paying her dues writing obits for the Village Voice, graduating to chasing stories for the newspaper, while Ronny relaxes on the Jersey Shore, working as a lifeguard and spending his nights at local bars. Worse, Katie struggles with panic attacks, and Ronny’s resentment over her past and present experiences sometimes culminates in violent or jealous outbursts. Distance, family deaths, and other love interests soon pull them apart, but when they reunite for a day in 2008, the remnants of their time together—not naked photographs but his unanswered love letters—promise to remind them of what they once were. Bennett (Summer Mirrors, 2015, etc.) returns to Belmar to tell a warts-and-all love story spanning decades, deftly breaking down the small moments that form long, awkward relationships. The first half of the novel is presented in fast-paced snippets of character and conversation. The dialogue is quick and relies heavily on the two protagonists’ understanding of each other, with their interactions full of in-jokes, slang, and references to their time together. There are recognizable hallmarks to differentiate the ’70s from the modern day, with numerous nods to the music, drug culture, and celebrities, and in the 2000s, that period’s technology. The book’s second half, taking place over a shorter amount of time, slows the pace considerably but keeps the engrossing tale’s most important aspect alive, its delicate switching between Ronny’s and Katie’s points of view.
A decades-old, honest love story that never feels like merely a time capsule.Pub Date: June 21, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-947021-22-8
Page Count: 252
Publisher: Unsolicited Press
Review Posted Online: Aug. 9, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
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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