Well-written, sympathetically earnest fiction.
A coming-of-age novel about a teenage musician grappling with love and loss.
At 15, Jane Bowman has yet to emotionally process the fiery death of her mother, a famed Latin-jazz percussionist who perished three years prior in the nightclub where she was performing. Jane lives in tony Sewickley Heights, Pa., with her novelist father Sam and two outspoken African-American housekeepers (“Mary One and Mary Two”) and forces herself to practice drumming, though the pastime reminds her too much of her beloved mother. At private school, Jane pals around with gay childhood friend Leo, but mostly keeps to herself, struggling with abandonment issues and weighty emotions always simmering just beneath the surface of her gruff, tomboyish exterior. Leo introduces her to Olivia Blue, a seasoned music teacher at a school for delinquent boys, hoping to stimulate Jane’s love for music. Their meeting stimulates Olivia to recruit Jane as the newest lead drummer of her school’s Allegheny Gatehouse Band, but it also ignites a romance between Olivia and Sam. After graduation, Jane heads to New York City, where her career as a percussionist blossoms with an eventful but short-lived stint with all-girl band Sisterhood of Soul, along with some heady sexual experimentation. The death of her grandparents creates a windfall of inherited wealth for Jane, but she manages to keep her bearings even in the midst of an opportunity to play with vulgar, cantankerous R&B star Bobby Angel. Love hits hard with a man from Jane’s past and the development of her own group nicely buoys the melodramatic denouement. Goldsby’s first novel (after her 2005 memoir Piano Girl), spans 15 years in the life of her gritty, resilient protagonist and is told with lyrical prose and deft characterization. Sharp editing is in order, however, to whittle down verbose chapters which tend to hobble the author’s promising premise. At moments, the narrative is too expository to keep casual readers glued.
Well-written, sympathetically earnest fiction.Pub Date: Sept. 2, 2008
ISBN: 978-1-4196-9939-9
Page Count: -
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 23, 2010
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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