An enjoyable novel based on a piece of recent economic history.
A fictional account of the Greek financial crisis.
In this novel, Myers (Betrayal in Europe, 2015) blends wholly made-up characters—financial wizards Jim Schiller, Jack Hawkins, and James Smith; behind-the-scenes fixer Sophie d’Auverne—with fictional versions of the European leaders who were in the headlines as Greece struggled to meet its financial obligations and maintain its place in the European Union in 2015. (Those officials include Angela Merkel, Christine Lagarde, Mario Draghi, and Alexis Tsipras.) Sophie jets from one financial capital to another helping to arrange a deal that will head off financial chaos, while her fiance, Jim, sets out on his own damage-control mission after realizing that his hedge fund has gotten involved in risky Greek investments. Jack and James decide to bring the monarchy back to Greece, regardless of the elected government’s preferences, and everyone is spying on everyone else, hoping for an edge. In the end, a deal is reached, the financiers continue to make money, and reporters continue to pay more attention to Yanis Varoufakis’ motorcycle than to his country’s financial policies. Sophie, the story’s core, is always ready with a snappy comeback (“That’s my helicopter. Yours is the little one out on the horizon”) or a politically astute move. Balancing her professional obligations with keeping her teenage daughter in line and living up to her aristocratic family’s standards, she always remains thoroughly French. The other characters are people who use terms like “Grexit” in casual conversation, and their stories will appeal to readers who are similarly devoted to the machinations that surround global finance. Those same readers, however, may find the repeated explanations of the novel’s real-life characters (“mentioning the powerful German finance minister, Wolfgang Schäuble, the number-two politician in Angela Merkel’s ruling coalition government”; “referring to Yanis Varoufakis, the Greek finance minister with the rock star reputation”; “referring to Christine Lagarde, the head of the International Monetary Fund”) superfluous. Yet the novel is fast-paced, with an intriguing plot (even for those who already know the outcome), and Myers demonstrates that a financial story can be a thriller even without a single drawn gun or weapon of mass destruction.
An enjoyable novel based on a piece of recent economic history.Pub Date: Dec. 20, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-5193-5262-0
Page Count: 220
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Feb. 15, 2016
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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