A dense, engrossing read for those who love to unravel the gossamer threads of a political mystery.
Polevoi’s debut period piece uncoils intersecting narratives about 17th-century political intrigue, naval warfare and love in the West Indies.
Sir Henry Morgan, a legendary privateer, is elevated to the position of Royal Governor of Jamaica. Apoplectic with resentment over the indignities heaped upon him by his King, Morgan conspires to consolidate control over the lucrative but illicit privateering trade by assembling a military force that answers only to him. He sends Captain Michael Scot to Darien country, a remote jungle territory in Panama ruled by Indians but recently overtaken by Spaniards because of its reported abundance of gold. Morgan’s hope is that the glory and financial windfall of the expedition will aggrandize his political clout. Meanwhile, he enlists the help of Jamaica’s Chief Justice Roger Dawkins to parry with his political adversary, the formidable Sir John Black. Dawkins quickly becomes embroiled in a shadowy world of misdirection, subterfuge and murder. To further muddy already turbid waters, Dawkins is courted by wealthy sugar plantation heiress Lily Barton, whose interest in him is both romantically and politically motivated. Dawkins, however, ends up sexually entangled with Barton’s most trusted slave. All these intertwined narratives lead to an explosive and unpredictable skein of conclusions. Polevoi provides stirring depictions of naval combat and a thoughtful meditation on the complexities of martial honor. The book is painstakingly researched and it vividly portays the historical and cultural milieu crucial to its telling. However, the arresting story is too often weighed down with gratuitously baroque prose and excursions into distracting psychoanalysis of its characters. Rather than allow the reader to draw his own inferences, Polevoi insists on coupling every moment of narrative significance with his own protracted commentary. An edit for brevity would be useful. Nevertheless, the story itself is a compelling one and the writing is sometimes nimbly and inventively descriptive. Impressive reflections on the relations between men and women and the tempestuous issue of slavery manage to be insightful without descending into the didactic.
A dense, engrossing read for those who love to unravel the gossamer threads of a political mystery.Pub Date: Jan. 19, 2012
ISBN: B00700A6I4
Page Count: 618
Publisher: Amazon Digital Services
Review Posted Online: March 19, 2012
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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