A somewhat unfocused lesson on the diverging paths that life can take.
An ill-fated romance inspires a young man’s meditations on society, politics, and religion in this novel.
Florian, a newly minted lawyer, and his girlfriend, Oblina, a college student, meet for a drink. The young man is eager to embark on the next phase of his life, and he plans to settle down with Oblina and pursue a career with a prestigious firm in a foreign city. But Oblina unceremoniously dumps him, announcing, “I really want you to go away.” The breakup alters the course of Florian’s life; shaken by the change in his circumstances, he fails to show up for the first day of his new job, much to the consternation of his father. Instead, he decides to write a book for all the “superficial, stupid” people in which he will “try to put everything right, to point at their mistakes, to show them the solutions using the right examples.” The remainder of the book alternates between Florian’s and Oblina’s lives, with excerpts from the former’s book in progress. Both of their stories end in tragedy, although Oblina seems positioned for even more misery at the book’s end, while Florian has “surmounted the top” of a literal mountain and seems poised to tackle even greater challenges ahead. That’s not surprising, given the way Grand consistently emphasizes the differences between the young man and his ex-girlfriend. Oblina is said to have “limited mental abilities,” and is portrayed as a promiscuous, lower-middle-class gold digger, while Florian is shown to be an intelligent member of the upper class. In one of the novel’s more disturbing passages, Oblina picks up a guy in a bar who rapes her, and both the sexual assault and her subsequent pregnancy appear to be presented as just punishment for her rejection of Florian. The novel’s attempts at social commentary also fall flat. That said, the novel has some evocative details (“The wind drove autumn leaves along the moonlit pavement”) and clever observations (“Heaven seemed to be sort of a library to her from which you could borrow books on only one boring subject”).
A somewhat unfocused lesson on the diverging paths that life can take.Pub Date: Sept. 7, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-5172-0250-7
Page Count: 328
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Sept. 21, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
Falls short of Crichton’s many blockbusters, but fun reading nonetheless, especially for those interested in the early days...
In 1876, professor Edward Cope takes a group of students to the unforgiving American West to hunt for dinosaur fossils, and they make a tremendous discovery.
William Jason Tertullius Johnson, son of a shipbuilder and beneficiary of his father’s largess, isn’t doing very well at Yale when he makes a bet with his archrival (because every young man has one): accompany “the bone professor” Othniel Marsh to the West to dig for dinosaur fossils or pony up $1,000, but Marsh will only let Johnson join if he has a skill they can use. They need a photographer, so Johnson throws himself into the grueling task of learning photography, eventually becoming proficient. When Marsh and the team leave without him, he hitches a ride with another celebrated paleontologist, Marsh’s bitter rival, Edward Cope. Despite warnings about Indian activity, into the Judith badlands they go. It’s a harrowing trip: they weather everything from stampeding buffalo to back-breaking work, but it proves to be worth it after they discover the teeth of what looks to be a giant dinosaur, and it could be the discovery of the century if they can only get them back home safely. When the team gets separated while transporting the bones, Johnson finds himself in Deadwood and must find a way to get the bones home—and stay alive doing it. The manuscript for this novel was discovered in Crichton’s (Pirate Latitudes, 2009, etc.) archives by his wife, Sherri, and predates Jurassic Park (1990), but if readers are looking for the same experience, they may be disappointed: it’s strictly formulaic stuff. Famous folk like the Earp brothers make appearances, and Cope and Marsh, and the feud between them, were very real, although Johnson is the author’s own creation. Crichton takes a sympathetic view of American Indians and their plight, and his appreciation of the American West, and its harsh beauty, is obvious.
Falls short of Crichton’s many blockbusters, but fun reading nonetheless, especially for those interested in the early days of American paleontology.Pub Date: May 23, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-06-247335-6
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: March 6, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2017
Slaughter (Cop Town, 2014, etc.) is so uncompromising in following her blood trails to the darkest places imaginable that...
Twenty-four years after a traumatic disappearance tore a Georgia family apart, Slaughter’s scorching stand-alone picks them up and shreds them all over again.
The Carrolls have never been the same since 19-year-old Julia vanished. After years of fruitlessly pestering the police, her veterinarian father, Sam, killed himself; her librarian mother, Helen, still keeps the girl's bedroom untouched, just in case. Julia’s sisters have been equally scarred. Lydia Delgado has sold herself for drugs countless times, though she’s been clean for years now; Claire Scott has just been paroled after knee-capping her tennis partner for a thoughtless remark. The evening that Claire’s ankle bracelet comes off, her architect husband, Paul, is callously murdered before her eyes and, without a moment's letup, she stumbles on a mountainous cache of snuff porn. Paul’s business partner, Adam Quinn, demands information from Claire and threatens her with dire consequences if she doesn’t deliver. The Dunwoody police prove as ineffectual as ever. FBI agent Fred Nolan is more suavely menacing than helpful. So Lydia and Claire, who’ve grown so far apart that they’re virtual strangers, are unwillingly thrown back on each other for help. Once she’s plunged you into this maelstrom, Slaughter shreds your own nerves along with those of the sisters, not simply by a parade of gruesome revelations—though she supplies them in abundance—but by peeling back layer after layer from beloved family members Claire and Lydia thought they knew. The results are harrowing.
Slaughter (Cop Town, 2014, etc.) is so uncompromising in following her blood trails to the darkest places imaginable that she makes most of her high-wire competition look pallid, formulaic, or just plain fake.Pub Date: Sept. 29, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-06-242905-6
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: June 30, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2015
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