A sometimes-melodramatic but compelling survivor’s story.
A Pakistani woman lives much of her life in the Middle East, facing many obstacles in her search for love and financial security, in this novel.
Sawera is born in Pakistan in 1978, and is immediately given up for adoption by her biological mother to her sister, then childless. After Sawera’s adoptive parents have two sons, she becomes the family scapegoat, often being beaten by her mother (as when the girl comes home early and catches her parent kissing a man who’s not her husband). Sawera craves acceptance through romance and gains a bad reputation in high school. Jumping into marriage at age 17, she slaves for her husband, Wasim, and his three brothers and father; bears three children; and soon looks for another escape. Like her father before her, she seeks a work visa in Saudi Arabia; leaving her husband behind, she takes her children abroad. The money is good, but working in Saudi Arabia, and later in Bahrain, as an expatriate is a constant scramble for visa extensions and being at the mercy of exploitative sponsors, some extracting money and others sexual favors. Sawera must often leave her kids in Pakistan with relatives while she works, divorces, marries, divorces again, and tries to become a beautician. In the end, her life gets on the right track at last. Sawera both experiences and causes suffering (her children are often lonely and left with unaffectionate caretakers), but Gumber (Dying to Live, 2017, etc.) tells her story as a matter of triumphal survival in harsh circumstances. Something like Becky Sharp, Sawera is a survivor who, despite guilt pangs, sees moralizing as hypocrisy, especially in a world where the rich and well-connected get away so easily with cheating and using the powerless. On occasion, Sawera isn’t very subtle about pulling the heartstrings: Her mother “beat me up so much that I carried the bruises for weeks. My real bruises took an even longer time to heal. The bruises to my soul.” Overall, though, she’s convincing, and admirable in her determination to improve life for herself and her kids.
A sometimes-melodramatic but compelling survivor’s story.Pub Date: Oct. 30, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5462-6498-9
Page Count: 156
Publisher: AuthorHouse
Review Posted Online: April 5, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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