A brief yet masterful novel of epic breadth.
Zink’s cerebral, fast-paced first novel chronicles a young woman’s life in Europe after marrying a man she’s known for three weeks.
Following her husband, Stephen, from Philadelphia to Bern, Switzerland, for his research and development job at a medical device firm, Tiffany explains, “We didn’t talk much about what we were doing. We had a deal.” They’re both whip-smart, but strangers, and the “deal” for Tiffany in this dark, philosophical sex comedy goes sour from the word go. After Stephen hits a bird with the car, swerves and crashes into a large rock, Tiffany miscarries, and he worries more about capturing the bird—the wallcreeper of the title—than helping her; weeks later, he forces her into anal sex. “I gasped for air, dreading the moment when he would pull out, and thought, Girls are lame.” She half-jokes, “I felt like the Empress Theodora. Can I get more orifices?” but notes, “My sense of depending on Stephen for my happiness had evaporated.” He does offer stability, though, so she stays married since she’d rather not work and has no degree or experience to bank on. They have affairs openly, and after his career goes sideways (drugs, heavy birding), their love survives, mostly as a hypnotic ideal. Moving to Germany, they live apart and become environmental activists, navigating complex public policy on natural resources—a subject Zink mines for humor and a sociopolitical counterpoint to Tiffany’s personal chaos—then reunite for a harrowing trek by donkey through Albania. Tiffany agrees she’s no feminist and doesn’t argue when a friend quips about her life’s trajectory, “My love, you have the attention span of a fish.” But at a remove from the uproarious, inventive and infinitely quotable sentences, Tiffany’s lonely existence careens from sex toward self-knowledge as death breezes by late in the book.
A brief yet masterful novel of epic breadth.Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-9897607-1-3
Page Count: 200
Publisher: Dorothy
Review Posted Online: July 29, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2014
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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