A lugubrious but moving account of a disturbed young woman’s troubled childhood and adolescence, by New Orleans second-novelist Friedmann (The Exact Image of Mother, 1991). Eleanor Rushing, like most orphans, suffers from a profound inner solitude that she has carried well into adulthood. “In case you don—t know it already, there is nothing worse than being a captive audience to dead silence.” Eleanor’s parents were killed in an airplane crash when she was ten, and she was brought up in New Orleans by Poppy (her grandfather) and Naomi (Poppy’s black housekeeper). Poppy is the silent type, as grim as cast iron and talkative as a post—which may be just as well, since when she learns of her parents” death Eleanor is struck dumb and doesn—t speak a word for the next four years. Her silence, though, may also be the result of a molestation by Naomi, who broke the news to Eleanor at her summer camp and then drove her home to Louisiana. Certainly it seems more than coincidental that Eleanor regains her speech at 14, the year she’s raped by a Tulane frat-boy. Given her catalogue of traumas, it isn—t surprising that Eleanor should eventually fall in love with Methodist preacher Maxim Walters. After following him to a convention in Nashville and starting an affair, she tries to convince him to leave his plain wife and start over with her. But Maxim worries about his reputation and even goes so far later as to request a restraining order to keep Eleanor away from him. The court that investigates Maxim’s complaint finds not only that she and Maxim were never lovers, but that Eleanor’s parents never died in any plane crash. Is Eleanor insane? Or merely deluded? The boundary between reality and fantasy can be elusive, especially when clouded by a succession of griefs. Depressing overall, but curiously affecting: Friedmann writes with a sensitivity that can touch the heart without falling prey to the sentimental. (First printing of 25,000; author tour)
Pub Date: May 1, 1999
ISBN: 1-58243-003-9
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Counterpoint
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 1999
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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