Interesting vignettes, but this novel never feels whole. Though billed as women’s fiction, the book will be of more interest...
A teenage girl spends short stints in London, Ghana and the United States with various family members.
Lila, 15, lives with her divorced mother in London. Her absent father has his own family in the States, leaving Lila and her mother to lean heavily on each other for company and support. This makes her mother’s sudden decision to ship Lila off to Ghana and unload her onto Auntie Irene all the more shocking. Lila’s mother proves to be selfish, immature, impossible to empathize with and difficult to believe in as a character. Lila’s time at Ghanaian boarding school is striking—details like the struggle to find drinking water, eating before flies settle on the food and learning to sweep with a reed broom paint a true picture of African life. Unfortunately, just as we are settling into the developing world, Lila is called back to London. Just as quickly, she is sent to the States for an odd Disneyland vacation with her father and his Christian sing-along family, who are strangers to Lila. Time and again Lila is uprooted so quickly that the narrative cannot keep up emotionally. The effort to depict people and places seems wasted, as each time we become invested in a place and a lifestyle, we are promptly plucked out and moved. Though this mirrors Lila’s efforts to comprehend her kaleidoscope life, readers will only find themselves rushed, not pensive, and left without any literary or emotional payoff. Lila’s narrative is a mix of tragedies and blessings, but the end is wrapped up in a neat, barely credible ribbon that is tied just as hastily as the book’s other chapters. Readers will recognize that Lila has been given short shrift by the adults in her unstable life, but they may never figure out the reason for journeying with her.
Interesting vignettes, but this novel never feels whole. Though billed as women’s fiction, the book will be of more interest to younger readers.Pub Date: April 1, 2010
ISBN: 978-1-4391-2610-3
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Washington Square/Pocket
Review Posted Online: Jan. 21, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2010
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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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