A flat novel with an interesting structure.
Jbara (Kahraman, 2009, etc.) tells the story of a female photographer in India searching for fulfillment in this fragmentary novel.
Shamyana’s father abandoned the family when she was young, and her relationship with her mother has always been distant. In high school, she discovers photography when her best friend, Shyam, shows her his new camera. Shyam makes his secret feelings for Shamyana known, and the two marry after graduation. Despite his conservative family, Shyam encourages Shamyana to pursue photography, which she sees as a way to access her confusing inner life. “My dream is to let the people see the world through my lens,” she says, to which he replies, “I have faith that you will succeed one day.” The young photographer eventually finds the marriage too constraining for her ambitions, and Shyam agrees to an amicable split. On a trip to Goa, she meets a hotel owner named Rohan with whom she senses immediate chemistry. A new friend sets her up with corporate shoots and magazine features, and her career burgeons. She gets mixed signals from Rohan, however, and when another man expresses interest in her, she marries him. But is it what she wants? Her nervous breakdown suggests otherwise. Jbara tells Shamyana’s story in a series of microchapters, many only a paragraph long. While some depict scenes or dialogue that advance the plot, others are lyrical snippets of the protagonist’s thoughts; from the chapter “Ignite Fire”: “This route is too confining for me to slither. I feel my senses ignite fire. That is seething in my soul. I was unable to be me. I repositioned myself. I felt my body incite fire. That is raging in my body. I can’t be me. I can’t be them.” Despite these windows of interiority, many characters and events feel stilted or flat, and Shamyana’s story elicits surprisingly little emotional investment from the reader. While the novel’s structure is ambitious and original, it’s not used effectively. Shamyana’s true self should be more accessible, and yet by the end of the novel, she still feels like a stranger.
A flat novel with an interesting structure.Pub Date: May 22, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-4505-3186-3
Page Count: 167
Publisher: AuthorHouse
Review Posted Online: Dec. 28, 2018
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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