A powerful, lovingly rendered page-turner full of intense emotion.
Taylor (Stones Skipping on Water, 2017, etc.) delivers a treatise on attachment, fate, and the romance of the past in this sci-fi mystery.
Jim Mercer has been many things to many people, but he’s not a quitter. A freelance reporter and thriller author, he drifts through his early 30s until he gets an assignment from the Los Angeles Times to write a piece on Emily Torrance, a 1940s painter who was brutally murdered early in her career and whose work is now set for an upcoming exhibition. He figures that the story would make a better novel than a nonfiction piece—that is, until he sees a picture of Emily. After looking at her self-portrait and the rest of her work, he quickly becomes enraptured. While digging for more information about her life and death, he finds something shocking: an intimate film strip of Emily’s—with him in it. Armed with apparent proof that his feelings for Emily are based on something real—however impossible that may seem—Jim puts all his investigative skills toward a new task: finding out how he can travel back in time, find Emily, and find a way to save the woman he loves once and for all. The novel has the classic pacing and style of a mystery thriller, and it’s no mean feat that the tension remains high even during the portions of the book that take place in the present, well past Emily’s death. Indeed, Jim’s obsession will cause readers to long for the next piece of information, the next step that brings him closer to Emily. What’s more, Emily proves to be an intriguing character in her own right, caught between her no-nonsense attitude and her artistic vision and between high culture and the base and cruel men who often dwell in that realm. Finally, the time-travel element not only enriches the plot and gives Jim a powerful motivation for his investigations, but also allows the story to blend traits of both modern thrillers and classic noir—a truly winning combination.
A powerful, lovingly rendered page-turner full of intense emotion.Pub Date: June 21, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-5213-3725-7
Page Count: 356
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Aug. 8, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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