Readers who like quaint Lake Wobegon–esque narratives will enjoy rooting for the residents of Alpine Valley as they...
Determined to save their small mill town from disaster, the resolute residents of Alpine Valley set a clever ruse into motion in veteran television writer Crehan’s debut novel.
Norman Rockwell couldn’t have painted a better setting than Alpine Valley, population 581, elevation 8,467 feet. Superficially, everything looks idyllic in this quaint Pacific Northwest mill town. Scratch the veneer, however, and a more somber situation is revealed: The closure of the local mill has led to an erosion of the tax base, and the town’s debts are running dangerously high. Nobody understands the severity of the situation better than local realtor and mother of two Annie LaPeer, who’s also the town’s mayor. Forced to figure out a way out of the morass, she and the town’s residents decide to fall back on legend. If the Loch Ness Monster and Bigfoot can still attract enthusiastic gawkers, they reason, why not resuscitate the story of the Alpine Valley Ape? Sure, nobody in recent memory has seen the monster, but everybody knows somebody who swears he has. Soon people in town create a masterful video, apparently showing the primate in action. It goes viral, and the town gets just what it wants: an avalanche of tourists and their dollars. Unfortunately, the situation also brings fresh complications, which the denizens of Alpine Valley must now solve. Crehan ably uses his clear, well-defined characters to present various moral arguments in this promising young-adult mystery. Although the townsfolk occasionally veer into caricature, they add plenty of color to the proceedings. Most of the story is told in the first person by Annie’s daughter, Melissa LaPeer, and she often threatens to derail the plotline with constant attention-getting devices: “This is a particularly important chapter because particularly important things happen in it, and I’m a little fearful that I won’t be able to get these things across to you as well as I really must.” Whimsical at first, these asides become annoying after a while, and a less self-indulgent voice might have better served the novel’s purpose. The plot also slows down halfway through before finally roaring back into action.
Readers who like quaint Lake Wobegon–esque narratives will enjoy rooting for the residents of Alpine Valley as they valiantly struggle to hang on to a fast-fading way of life.Pub Date: April 1, 2014
ISBN: 978-0615981079
Page Count: 314
Publisher: Boda Books
Review Posted Online: Nov. 14, 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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