A contrived, uninvolving love triangle surrounded by a sprightlier comedy of modern manners.
Love conquers all, especially such trivial things as monogamy and sexual orientation, in this polyamorous romance.
Life for young people in the postindustrial squalor of Swansea, Wales, is a treadmill of dead-end jobs, drinking bouts in grotty bars, and run-ins with racist skinheads, leavened only by fluid but intense housemate relationships. One such blossoms when math grad student Dom moves in with Richard, a gamer geek who works at a call center. Soon they fall madly in love, which is a bit mystifying to everyone, including them, because they remain staunch heterosexuals who never have sex even when they sleep with each other. In fact, the main way the reader knows they are in love is that they frequently hug and say, “I love you.” Dom’s girlfriend, Caroline, is miffed by this turn until Dom convinces her that he can love her and Richard at the same time, at which point, things gravitate toward a polyamorous trio reinforced by more omnidirectional hugs and I love yous. Barrett’s novel self-consciously celebrates the surmounting of gender categories and possessive attitudes that pose pointless barriers to human happiness and includes flash-forward scenes decades in the future when society—at least in Barcelona—has progressed enough to allow Dom, Richard, and Caroline to formalize their polyamorous marriage. (Indeed, gender becomes so passé that gender-neutral pronouns “zie” and “hir” are ubiquitous.) Alas, their relationship is too bland, schematic, and devoid of passion, sexual or otherwise, to really hold the reader’s interest. Fortunately, the novel surrounds the central trio with livelier characters, including Caroline’s domineering gal pal, Nomi, and gay waif Rutti, whose hilariously sardonic bitchery covers up a poignant loneliness. Barrett is a talented writer with a good feel for his rough-edged Welsh social setting and a sharp but sympathetic eye for the mores and foibles of the queer demimonde and its supporting culture of politically correct progressivism. Apart from the lackluster relationship at its core, this combination makes for a smart, entertaining read.
A contrived, uninvolving love triangle surrounded by a sprightlier comedy of modern manners.Pub Date: June 1, 2015
ISBN: 978-1590213155
Page Count: -
Publisher: Lethe Press
Review Posted Online: April 1, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.
A violent surfacing of adolescence (which has little in common with Tarkington's earlier, broadly comic, Seventeen) has a compulsive impact.
"Nobody big except me" is the dream world of Holden Caulfield and his first person story is down to the basic, drab English of the pre-collegiate. For Holden is now being bounced from fancy prep, and, after a vicious evening with hall- and roommates, heads for New York to try to keep his latest failure from his parents. He tries to have a wild evening (all he does is pay the check), is terrorized by the hotel elevator man and his on-call whore, has a date with a girl he likes—and hates, sees his 10 year old sister, Phoebe. He also visits a sympathetic English teacher after trying on a drunken session, and when he keeps his date with Phoebe, who turns up with her suitcase to join him on his flight, he heads home to a hospital siege. This is tender and true, and impossible, in its picture of the old hells of young boys, the lonesomeness and tentative attempts to be mature and secure, the awful block between youth and being grown-up, the fright and sickness that humans and their behavior cause the challenging, the dramatization of the big bang. It is a sorry little worm's view of the off-beat of adult pressure, of contemporary strictures and conformity, of sentiment….
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.Pub Date: June 15, 1951
ISBN: 0316769177
Page Count: -
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1951
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
APPRECIATIONS
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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