Spare, haunting tale of flawed friendships, marriage and possible revenge.
In this murder mystery, dowdy Jane Althauss becomes a suspect in the death of her husband following the return of her glamorous college roommate.
It’s 1994, and “short and podgy” Jane, 37, is stroking dog Terry in her Beverly Hills home. Then the police arrive to take her to the morgue to identify physician husband John, found murdered by gunshot in his car. “Slender, tall, and elegant” Mary Ellen arrives to bring Jane home. Mary Ellen appears sympathetic yet later, exasperated by Jane’s ongoing grief, chucks Terry from Jane’s lap, excusing her action by saying that John was also her friend. The novel then explains their connection. In college, Jane was friends with the more affluent, popular Mary Ellen. John arrived at the girls’ apartment one night for Mary Ellen, absent since she was dismissive of the then-unsophisticated boy. John and Jane date, and John soon realizes Jane will make a perfect doctor’s wife. After college, Mary Ellen storms off to Manhattan and seduces her married newspaper editor boss to snag his job. John asks Jane to drop even her menial support jobs to become a full-time housewife. Traveling a lot to conferences, he seems restless. Then Mary Ellen reappears, dropping in on them in the titular La Luna Rossa restaurant, leading to several group dinners. When John has scheduling conflicts, an angry Mary Ellen tells Jane that he must be cheating; she suggests hiring a PI. However, when later interviewed as part of the police investigation into John’s murder, the PI isn’t sure which woman he met with. First-time novelist Roberti brings a tinge of Henry James’ Washington Square to this saga of a plain woman perhaps at her breaking point. Yet she also sprinkles in enough details to leave readers, like this story’s detectives, in doubt about the case. While this open ending might be frustrating to some, and the dynamics of John, Jane and Mary Ellen might have been explored further, this story still holds significant dramatic power.
Spare, haunting tale of flawed friendships, marriage and possible revenge.Pub Date: Oct. 6, 2014
ISBN: 978-1499060690
Page Count: 118
Publisher: Xlibris
Review Posted Online: Dec. 17, 2014
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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