An honest, entertaining trio of stories that focus on women’s trials and friendships.
Two novellas and a short story that address ordinary lives with grace and efficiency.
In the first, titular novella in Sharpe’s (The Danger is Seduction, 2013, etc.) collection, a group of older, divorced female friends commiserate about men, marriage, grown children, spirituality and the future of their intertwining lives in Santa Fe, N.M. Natalie is the sexy, confident one; Joey, the narrator, is cautious and reflective; Dana often makes wise quips; Juliet is the mystic searcher; and Nan is simply down-to-earth. As Joey dips a toe into the dating pool, she finds that romance in middle-age is as tricky a terrain as the hiking trails around the famed, artsy city. When Nan suffers a heart attack, her friends rally around her in a show of heartwarming support. The second novella, Dangling Woman, concerns Penelope, whose husband recently fell from a chairlift and, after a period of unconsciousness, died. The local prosecutor was a friend of the deceased and has dreams of making it big in Washington, D.C., so he goes after Penelope, accusing her of pushing her husband from the lift after a spat. Afraid for her future, Penelope finds that her own children aren’t the unwavering supporters she assumed they would be, and that politics in Santa Fe may be more complex than she anticipated. The short story, “Senior Moments,” is a gentle meditation on the relationship between a grandmother and her grandson, in which the child’s youthful energy manages to both revitalize and exhaust the older woman. Sharpe’s prose style is straightforward and easy to read, and her dialogue is refreshingly believable. The descriptions of New Mexico’s landscape and various flora and fauna (“The slopes she can see from where she stands are still in pristine winter whites”) give the stories a unique flavor and also a universality that makes the characters’ stories familiar and relatable.
An honest, entertaining trio of stories that focus on women’s trials and friendships.Pub Date: Jan. 3, 2014
ISBN: 978-1484056141
Page Count: 176
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: March 13, 2014
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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