The action is often sluggish and nearly always weightless in this transparently plotted, melodramatic novel about the European conquest of the Carolina coastline, from the author of Bayou (1991), Columbia (1986), and Sea Star (1983). Our story starts in 1587 with the landing of a new British colony on Roanoke Island, just before the birth of Virginia Dare. Then Dare and the rest of the colonists disappear. Next we meet Leah Hancock and her daughters, solemn Tess and charismatic Glory, in a tobacco-raising settlement in 1711. Indian warriors kill Leah's husband and badly wound her, but Leah and the girls escape to a colony of Scottish lumberjacks in Cape Fear. Leah marries the ship captain who brought them there. They all live relatively peacefully until Leah dies of smallpox and the captain fobs Tess and Glory off onto a dashing pirate. Tess marries him, Glory goes to live with them, and the sisters run the household and raise Tess' three children together. Then Glory gets pregnant and dies in childbirth and Tess is left to raise her niece, Della. Della grows up to be a femme fatale and marries Philip Gage, owner of a neighboring plantation called Deepwater. Their marriage is troubled from the start: Philip, who is loyal to the King in the brewing battle for independence from England, is always away for political meetings, while Della and her obsequious slave abet his rebel enemies. Della and Philip take in his daughter by another woman who comes, goes, marries young, and sends her infant daughter, Laurel, to be raised by Della after Philip's death. Laurel inherits Deepwater and marries a Quaker, with whom she helps slaves escape through the underground railroad and raises three children. After the Civil War, newly freed blacks claim part of Deepwater, a school for black children is established, and a schoolteacher arrives from up North. Laurel has an affair with the teacher, but it eventually peters out, as does the rest of the story. The lackluster narrative—a patchwork of animal vignettes and italicized history that the author didn't manage to weave into the story—never quite comes to life.
Pub Date: March 1, 1994
ISBN: 0-8217-4485-2
Page Count: 496
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1994
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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