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THE THINGS WE DO WHEN NO ONE IS WATCHING

The best of these stories tell resonant and lyrical tales of the dangers and frustrations of life at all ages.

An intimate look at lives both everyday and surreal.

The stories in this collection abound with reminders of mortality, characters who live on the periphery of death, and harbingers of ominous fates to come. “Childhood is a dangerous country,” says the narrator of the title story—a statement that could be the thesis for this entire collection. (Though adulthood doesn’t fare much better.) The narrator of “The Man Who Fell Out of the Sky” is forced to grapple with the responsibilities he inherits after a friend dies in a plane crash and his own talent for disseminating bad news. At the center of “Miracle Boy” is a comatose child whose presence seemingly heals the sick, even as he himself is unable to regain consciousness. While some of these stories cover familiar thematic territory—family responsibilities, the flawed bonds between parents and children—Gerard is at his best when he veers into the surreal. “Gloriana,” for instance, boasts a great opening sentence: “There are rules about ghosts, as everybody knows.” The story that follows blends mystery and hints of the supernatural to create a beguiling result. And “Night Camp,” which opens the book, is structured as its narrator’s memories of his time working at a camp for children who, for reasons physical and psychological, were on a nocturnal schedule. It’s a haunting beginning, reminiscent of Ray Bradbury in both its nostalgia and its glimpses of something sinister below the surface. The story showcases the empathy that runs throughout the book and establishes larger themes of memory’s fallibility and the way that youth does not exempt people from harm.

The best of these stories tell resonant and lyrical tales of the dangers and frustrations of life at all ages.

Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2017

ISBN: 978-1-943491-09-4

Page Count: 161

Publisher: BkMk/Univ. of Missouri-Kansas City

Review Posted Online: July 16, 2017

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2017

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A LITTLE LIFE

The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.

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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

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JURASSIC PARK

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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