A harrowing story that readers will find compelling to the very end.
The past is never really past in Silman’s (Boundaries, 2015, etc.) latest novel, in which a man thinks back to his childhood in World War II–era Berlin.
It’s 1989, and the Berlin Wall has just come down. This awakens traumatic memories in Paul Bertram (ne Berger), who was a Jewish child in Berlin and escaped with his family to Sweden and then to America. He asks his ex-wife, Eve, to accompany him back to the German capital. They’d been married for 23 years and had three kids before Paul became distant and unfaithful. Paul has always been immensely talented, charming, and successful; everybody loved him—except Paul. Now he hopes for some sort of expiation in Germany, and surprisingly, Eve agrees to go with him. The Jewish Berger family had lived in Berlin for generations; they were successful and respected jewelers. In the 1930s, they thought that Adolf Hitler’s evil regime would pass. Later, their protector was Paul’s grandfather Gunther Berger’s chief designer, a gentile named Hjalmar Friedmann. The Friedmann family moves into the Bergers’ large house to disguise the Jewish family’s presence there. It gradually becomes, in effect, the Friedmanns’ house, as the Bergers have to hide in the attic. After Hjalmar dies in 1944, the Bergers make another long, dangerous trek. In this work, Silman shows herself to be an accomplished and experienced writer. The novel’s pacing is almost excruciatingly slow, but that’s what this study demands, as it allows the author to dig deeply into Paul’s pain and his relationship with Eve. Similarly, the elder Paul seems almost too good to be true, but that, too, is necessary so that readers can understand his suffering—his later success didn’t heal his wounds as he’d hoped it would. Over the course of the story, Paul comes to terms with his heritage, the awful things that he has done, and what has been done to him.
A harrowing story that readers will find compelling to the very end.Pub Date: March 5, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-64008-900-6
Page Count: 296
Publisher: Campden Hill Books
Review Posted Online: Jan. 3, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 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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