A friend-triangle so busy with the bright lights of the big city that it never quite decides whether to be a fun read or a...
Two gay men and their pseudo-hag go looking for love and drugs in the London club scene.
It’s not surprising that British author Burston acknowledges Russell T. Davies here, since this debut is so clearly influenced by Davies’ fizzy UK TV show Queer as Folk. It could almost have used some of the same characters’ names. Readers may think at first that the story is going to be about 32-year-old Martin, whom we meet in the opening pages as he is slowly realizing that Christopher, his serious boyfriend, has just left him after acquiring a new, gymed-up physique and the wandering eyes to go with it. Martin’s best mate John—a flighty flight attendant who’s mentally a 15-year-old, with a sense of caring compassion to match—is sort of sorry for him, but not really, and he uses Martin’s newly single status as an excuse to drag him out to every club and bar in town so John can show off his new drug-dealer boyfriend Fernando. The third in this little triangle is Martin’s friend Caroline, a Vogue-ready young professional about town with a boyfriend, Graham, whom she’s convinced is gay, and a mounting coke habit. None of them seems terribly bright, but they do like their drugs, and a good chunk of the tale is filled by Martin and John’s wild, Ecstasy-soaked escapades. Meanwhile, Caroline spins around in her own insecure orbit. She drives the actually quite heterosexual Graham away by trying to out him at a family dinner, and then her boss catches her doing lines on her mousepad. Although he gives Martin the denouement, Burston seems more emotionally invested in Caroline’s character, relegating John and Martin to their own stunted immaturity.
A friend-triangle so busy with the bright lights of the big city that it never quite decides whether to be a fun read or a morality tale. It ends up a slick but unrewarding mix of the two.Pub Date: June 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-446-69133-X
Page Count: 288
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2004
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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