In McLean’s debut novel, an alcoholic ex–Big Leaguer who’s coaching in the boondocks while awaiting a liver transplant suddenly gets a girlfriend, an offer to play for the St. Louis Cardinals and a slew of exploits he never saw coming.
Paul Kolbe’s adventure begins with a perhaps-imagined conversation with long-dead Triple Crown winner Joe Fisher, who leaves Kolbe with a decidedly real tin of pine tar. One drunken night, Kolbe, who has an “endowed seat” at the All Pro Sports Pub & Grill, in Rochester, Minnesota, is picked up by Heather, a beautiful woman who’s the niece of Sam the bartender; she’s also Fisher’s great-granddaughter. On top of that, Kolbe is offered a spot as an outfielder for the Cardinals—and that’s just the beginning. Well-written and hard to put down, McLean spices his redemption tale with baseball politics, personality conflicts, ownership issues, illegal gambling, romance and attempted murder. During Kolbe’s tenure with the Cards, his hitting places him squarely in the competition for the Triple Crown. Meanwhile, he cuts back on his drinking, his physical condition deteriorates and he gets involved with a hooker named Nikki. This all leads to threats from a gambler (who hints that he wants Kolbe to fake a hitting drought), a strange vehicle tailing him and someone taking potshots. McLean skillfully moves his tale along while transitioning between styles. To keep the blow-by-blow progression of the baseball season from becoming tedious, McLean employs the lively voice of a baseball announcer and “Bernie’s Bytes,” an online column: One column, titled “Kolbe sends the fans home happy, again,” reads, “Paul Kolbe has shown remarkable patience in his plate appearances this season, averaging over five pitches per trip to the plate. Every pitcher in the league knows his approach and reminds himself of Paul’s tendencies when going over ‘the book’ on the Cards left fielder.” McLean is also fond of wordplay. Names echo each other—Kolbe, Colby, Cole—while characters continually force monikers on one another: “Boss Lady,” “geezer,” “Paulie,” “Sailor,” “slugger.”
A joy for baseball fans and, in the frigid offseason, anyone looking for summer dreaming.
Pub Date: May 15, 2014
ISBN: 978-0615677262
Page Count: 276
Publisher: One Last Hurrah
Review Posted Online: July 29, 2014
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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