Though punctuated by clever cartoons, it’s still too long and not very funny.
A 20-something Florida house-flipper navigates the land mines of young adulthood.
Holic (American Fraternity Man, 2013, etc.) captures the essence of the novel he’s sending up here, Jay McInerny’s Bright Lights, Big City (1984), while transposing it to a more boring place—Orlando, Florida, circa 2009—offering way less cocaine and replacing the Brat Pack vibe with a True West–ish rivalry between brothers who are not nearly as interesting as Sam Shepard's angry siblings or McInerny's 1980s-era stereotypical coke addicts. Constructed as five “books,” which are entangled but not orderly, the novel tracks the arc of 20-something loser Marc. He’s been abandoned by his fiancee, Shelley, as well as his business partner, Edwin, who left him with 10 lousy properties right on the eve of the real estate bubble's bursting. He’s also estranged from his well-meaning but ruthless father. One of the troubling qualities of this novel about a privileged dude is that it's often, well, whiny; Marc is a sad sack whose narrative drama only changes when he’s forced to take in his freeloader bro, Kyle. The first book is constructed as a Choose-Your-Own-Adventure novel, which might or might not resonate with readers but definitely reflects Marc's gloomy existential crisis in which any decision seems like torment. Through all the books, there are endless sequences of Marc, Kyle, and their various friends watching the end of the Orlando Magic’s 2009 NBA season, broken up by odd jolts in style. The third book dives deep into Marc’s childhood, ending with him being assaulted after another drunk, angry night out. The next volume gets even stranger, abandoning Marc’s first-person narration for a series of vignettes from the points of view of Marc’s brother, his friends, the mayor of Orlando, and a long-dead, legendary man named Orlando Reeves, a soldier killed during the Seminole war. It all comes to a head during a friend's wedding, constructed by the narrative as a “Final Exam” for Marc, forcing him to take stock of the decisions he’s made and just what it means to be a “grown-ass man.”
Though punctuated by clever cartoons, it’s still too long and not very funny.Pub Date: Dec. 10, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-941681-61-9
Page Count: 620
Publisher: Burrow Press
Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2019
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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