Contrived and dry, but resoundingly upbeat.
Can a few thousand well-intentioned engineers and scientists help 25,000 hearty, well-intentioned South Africans put the world back together after a comet wipes out most of the planet? You bet!
Instead of following the apocalyptic post-disaster scenarios of On the Beach or the Mad Max films, this fiction debut from technological apologist and scientific optimist Florman (The Introspective Engineer, 1996, etc.) more closely resembles B.F. Skinner's Walden Two. Before he can offer his cheerful take on humanity's ability to solve problems, however, Florman must wipe the slate clean by having technology seem to fail: in the year 2009, a missile fired from Earth with the intention of deflecting a comet goes awry, exploding its warhead in such a way that on Christmas Day the comet slams into the Pacific Ocean, off the coast of northern California. The fiery shockwave, massive tidal waves, and freezing rain are both horrifying and intriguing to an international convention of engineers aboard a cruise ship off the southeastern coast of South Africa, the one part of the globe where the comet's effects are minimal. When the ship hits something and starts to sink, said engineers calmly decamp to the mineral-rich tropical province of Kwa Zulu Natal, where some 25,000 others have also escaped extinction. Narrated in part by technological historian Wilson Hardy Jr., the story moves forward as a series of dialogue-heavy lectures in which Hardy and other characters pile on the fun facts about science, technology, and those plucky South Africans (Muslims and Hindus, as well as Boers and Brits), while the ship's high-tech brains form committees with the mid- to low-tech survivors to rebuild, restore, and make babies. A passing challenge from a marauding pirate queen is almost effortlessly rebuffed, and despite a lack of most 21st-century luxuries, life goes on.
Contrived and dry, but resoundingly upbeat.Pub Date: Dec. 11, 2001
ISBN: 0-312-26652-9
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Dunne/St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2001
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.
Sisters work together to solve a child-abandonment case.
Ellie and Julia Cates have never been close. Julia is shy and brainy; Ellie gets by on charm and looks. Their differences must be tossed aside when a traumatized young girl wanders in from the forest into their hometown in Washington. The sisters’ professional skills are put to the test. Julia is a world-renowned child psychologist who has lost her edge. She is reeling from a case that went publicly sour. Though she was cleared of all wrongdoing, Julia’s name was tarnished, forcing her to shutter her Beverly Hills practice. Ellie Barton is the local police chief in Rain Valley, who’s never faced a tougher case. This is her chance to prove she is more than just a fading homecoming queen, but a scarcity of clues and a reluctant victim make locating the girl’s parents nearly impossible. Ellie places an SOS call to her sister; she needs an expert to rehabilitate this wild-child who has been living outside of civilization for years. Confronted with her professional demons, Julia once again has the opportunity to display her talents and salvage her reputation. Hannah (The Things We Do for Love, 2004, etc.) is at her best when writing from the girl’s perspective. The feral wolf-child keeps the reader interested long after the other, transparent characters have grown tiresome. Hannah’s torturously over-written romance passages are stale, but there are surprises in store as the sisters set about unearthing Alice’s past and creating a home for her.
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.Pub Date: March 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-345-46752-3
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2005
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.
A violent surfacing of adolescence (which has little in common with Tarkington's earlier, broadly comic, Seventeen) has a compulsive impact.
"Nobody big except me" is the dream world of Holden Caulfield and his first person story is down to the basic, drab English of the pre-collegiate. For Holden is now being bounced from fancy prep, and, after a vicious evening with hall- and roommates, heads for New York to try to keep his latest failure from his parents. He tries to have a wild evening (all he does is pay the check), is terrorized by the hotel elevator man and his on-call whore, has a date with a girl he likes—and hates, sees his 10 year old sister, Phoebe. He also visits a sympathetic English teacher after trying on a drunken session, and when he keeps his date with Phoebe, who turns up with her suitcase to join him on his flight, he heads home to a hospital siege. This is tender and true, and impossible, in its picture of the old hells of young boys, the lonesomeness and tentative attempts to be mature and secure, the awful block between youth and being grown-up, the fright and sickness that humans and their behavior cause the challenging, the dramatization of the big bang. It is a sorry little worm's view of the off-beat of adult pressure, of contemporary strictures and conformity, of sentiment….
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.Pub Date: June 15, 1951
ISBN: 0316769177
Page Count: -
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1951
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
APPRECIATIONS
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