An evocative but excessively adulatory fictionalized biography.
Screenwriter Myers’ debut novel illuminates the life of Leonardo da Vinci, depicting him as a painter and inventor driven by curiosity about the world around him.
The Barbera Foundation’s Mentoris Project publishes novels and nonfiction celebrating great Italians and Italian-Americans. This volume begins in Tuscany in 1459: As an illegitimate child, 7-year-old Leonardo isn’t allowed to attend school, but he educates himself by paying attention to the natural wonders around him—and he’s interested in everything he sees. This becomes his motto: “To be a painter, one must be a great observer not only of people, but all of nature.” At age 15, he moves to Florence to be an artist’s apprentice, and soon, church panels and nobles’ portraits are his bread and butter. But his interests also extend into science and philosophy: He’s fascinated by a solar eclipse, investigates anatomy and the mechanics of flight, and even questions the nature of the soul. He moves among Milan, Florence, and Rome, serving as a court painter for King Louis XII and as an architect for King Francis I, both of France, during the Italian Wars. Truly, this was the epitome of a Renaissance man. His idealism and curiosity get him into trouble, however; he’s briefly a military engineer but is so appalled by battles that he deserts from Cesare Borgia’s army. When Pope Leo X threatens him with excommunication for dissecting corpses, he replies, “I think it is right to study the works of God.” In this novel’s most rewarding scenes, readers see Leonardo’s famous works in progress: The Last Supper mural for a convent (which starts peeling months later, due to his experimental paint) and the portrait of silk merchant’s wife Lisa Gherardini with her “mysterious smile”; the Mona Lisa remains unfinished for years because of his struggle to convey her “wordless wisdom.” Myers also manages the sweep of time well, particularly via the use of characters’ letters. Occasionally, though, he resorts to lines such as “More years passed.” Oddly, this book most resembles a biography of a saint: Leonardo speaks in profound sound bites and hardly seems to have any flaws, except perhaps a reluctance to finish projects. A bit more earthiness might have been truer to his character and the time period.
An evocative but excessively adulatory fictionalized biography.Pub Date: April 12, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-947431-09-6
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Barbera Foundation
Review Posted Online: May 7, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
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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