Hill, author of superior mysteries (Ruling Passion, etc.) and so-so thrillers (The Spy's Wife, etc.), offers a much more ambitious novel this time: a tale of three WW I deserters, 1916-1918, that's fairly strong as melodrama, fairly weak when it strains for psychosexual insights and thematic resonance. The British deserter is naive farm-lad Josh, who becomes useless as a soldier after witnessing the court-martial/execution of his beloved brother (who refused to follow kamikaze orders in the Battle of the Somme); unfortunately, he's more a clumsy metaphor than a believable character—especially when his tears are described as "last fragile symbols of purity and innocence in a world of the broken, the befouled and the betrayed." The German deserter is Sergeant Lothar, an aristocrat with radical/antiwar sentiments and a guilty conscience (because of his war-widowed sister-in-law's suicide). And when Lothar and Josh team up, mid-battle, to flee, they wind up joining a large band of deserters led by Hill's third central character: Australian macho-man Viney, a heavy-handed study in repressed homosexuality. Once the newcomers join "Viney's Volunteers" in their hide-out (an abandoned German bunker in no-man's-land), tensions escalate among the deserters: pragmatic Viney and idealistic Lothar vie for power, for Josh's adoration, while some of the others give vent to sheer greed, cowardice, or bloodthirstiness. Further complications ensue when the deserters form an uneasy alliance with a French peasant-family—which includes beautiful young Nicole (whom Josh inevitably loves) and her shell-shocked brother. . .whom Josh accidentally kills, propelling Nicole into the arms of Lothar (for a one-shot pregnancy). Meanwhile, the deserters are being stalked by a British captain whose fiance was killed, unintentionally, during one of Viney's anti-Army raids. And finally, amid a German Army assault, the priorities shift in uplifting—but unlikely—directions: the British captain helps Josh and Nicole to flee together; Viney, thanks in part to the onset of sexual self-awareness (after a brief, unconvincing consummation with Josh), becomes a sort of war-hero in the corny fade-out. Throughout, in fact, though the deserter theme is relatively fresh, Hill succumbs far too often to clich‚s of character and plotting from related genres (POW/lifeboat dramas, wartime soap-operas). On the other hand, his attempts at more serious, literary textures are largely misguided: stagey speeches to reflect conflicting views on war, socialism, and other historical issues; stilted ventures into poetic language; crude proclamations of "tragic irony." And the result, while fitfully involving as action-adventure and always earnestly workmanlike, is neither absorbing as a three-cornered character study nor persuasive as an exploration of the deserter phenomenon.
Pub Date: Feb. 2, 1985
ISBN: 0586070850
Page Count: 397
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: April 3, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 1986
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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