Capable but unexciting rehash of classic sleaze.
They’re b-a-a-a-a-c-k!
The two surviving heroines of Jacqueline Susann’s seminal 1968 trash epic, Valley of the Dolls, are a lot older but not significantly wiser in this sequel by the author of Satisfaction (1987). Former model Anne Welles is married to movie agent Lyon Burke, and singer Neely O’Hara is knocking ’em dead in Vegas. They’ve had their share of life’s rewards and life’s disappointments. Anne has a beautiful little daughter and everything money can buy, including a Fifth Avenue apartment and a house in Southampton. She knows her husband will never be faithful, but she’s come to terms with that (discreet tippling on expensive wine helps a little). Several-times married Neely has identical twin sons who live with their father—not that she cares much. Getting her act together after a stint in rehab, she’s as brassy as ever, wowing the “fat people with fat wallets” out in the Nevada desert while she dreams of a movie career to rival Barbra Streisand’s. For the most part, their bad-girl days are over, and an occasional Valium or Xanax is about it for cheap thrills. Flash forward: Anne has divorced Lyon and hosts a morning TV show. Neely is stuck in a going-nowhere relationship with producer Dave Feld, and her comeback fantasies have evaporated. Her son Dylan is taking suggestive photographs of Anne’s daughter Jenn, who’s only 13, and simultaneously carrying on an illicit affair with an older woman, Anne’s friend Gretchen. What’s a mother to do? Get pregnant again! The culprit: good old Lyon, Anne’s ex, an upper-class Brit who’s inexplicably attracted to Neely’s raucous charm. Neely pops a few pills, frets, and throws tantrums, but life goes on. Will Lyon survive his tempestuous relationship with noisy Neely? Will icy Anne ever warm up to her newest wealthy suitor? Will someone please throw a bucket of cold water on all those copulating teenagers?
Capable but unexciting rehash of classic sleaze.Pub Date: July 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-609-60585-2
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2001
Not as thematically ambitious as Whitehead’s earlier work, but a whole lot of fun to read.
Another surprise from an author who never writes the same novel twice.
Though Whitehead has earned considerable critical acclaim for his earlier work—in particular his debut (The Intuitionist, 1999) and its successor (John Henry Days, 2001)—he’ll likely reach a wider readership with his warmest novel to date. Funniest as well, though there have been flashes of humor throughout his writing. The author blurs the line between fiction and memoir as he recounts the coming-of-age summer of 15-year-old Benji Cooper in the family’s summer retreat of New York’s Sag Harbor. “According to the world, we were the definition of paradox: black boys with beach houses,” writes Whitehead. Caucasians are only an occasional curiosity within this idyll, and parents are mostly absent as well. Each chapter is pretty much a self-contained entity, corresponding to a rite of passage: getting the first job, negotiating the mysteries of the opposite sex. There’s an accident with a BB gun and plenty of episodes of convincing someone older to buy beer, but not much really happens during this particular summer. Yet by the end of it, Benji is well on his way to becoming Ben, and he realizes that he is a different person than when the summer started. He also realizes that this time in his life will eventually live only in memory. There might be some distinctions between Benji and Whitehead, though the novelist also spent his youthful summers in Sag Harbor and was the same age as Benji in 1985, when the novel is set. Yet the first-person narrator has the novelist’s eye for detail, craft of character development and analytical instincts for sharp social commentary.
Not as thematically ambitious as Whitehead’s earlier work, but a whole lot of fun to read.Pub Date: April 28, 2009
ISBN: 978-0-385-52765-1
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2009
BOOK TO SCREEN
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
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
