Second-timer Toth (Fizz, 2003) tries for a metaphysical leap into contemporary ennui, but his prose is so choked in metaphor...
A writerly, claustrophobic story about the collapse of a California marriage.
In the disintegrating coastal town of Mercy, which is experiencing a financial meltdown, Maurice Melnick, the descendant of the 19th-century founder, living in a magisterial home inherited from his industrious father, feels trapped and static in his 20-year childless marriage with glum, self-deprecating Sheila. He decides to paint a picture of her (he was an aspiring painter before he turned to graphics), which promises to be a final offering of love, or parting. While he tries to capture her smile, fast growing into a frown, Sheila—who’s suspicious of the portrait and sees it as another failed attempt by her fat, aging, alcoholic husband—hooks up with her more glam girlhood friend Holly, attractive and game for taking self-betterment classes, such as the class in fencing they both attend at the Y. Yet neither Maurice nor Sheila is able to transcend middle-aged torpor or their pampered, inherited lifestyle. Maurice begins to be visited by a kind of Faustian imp, Jonah, who plays on Maurice’s fears of being trapped in water and swallowed by a fish, and reminds him naggingly of his life’s many failures; while Sheila, still smarting from the insufficient attention she received as a child from her father, believes that “any love could be saved.” Meanwhile, the town is on the verge of collapse, mayor Zach is a dipsomaniac and the factory might as well be labeled “Made in the Philippines.” Maurice and Sheila have the brilliant idea of staging a great fireworks display, and amid the jumping of ship by various citizenry, Maurice is left to take command.
Second-timer Toth (Fizz, 2003) tries for a metaphysical leap into contemporary ennui, but his prose is so choked in metaphor that the slender novel feels denser than it is, stoically literary but fairly unreadable. A self-conscious work offering little pleasure, much stylistic angst.Pub Date: July 1, 2005
ISBN: 1-932557-09-1
Page Count: 168
Publisher: Bleak House
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2005
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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