A smart and emotionally sound sci-fi novella whose timely moral questions and determined characters make an old premise...
Earth is visited by an alien race with questionable motives in Mann’s sci-fi novella.
Film student Chelsea, a Los Angeles native, is studying abroad in England when aliens contact planet Earth. The interplanetary beings are hairy, horse-faced individuals who speak in elongated trills (the long faces and vocalizations bring about the moniker “Elongi”). Chelsea is astonished by the news of their arrival, but she carries on living life just as everyone else does. She is quite interested in her Japanese friend Hiri, and the two spend romantic evenings together in his luxury condo, feeling they are living in a time of great excitement. After the Elongi land on Earth rather suddenly, they silently roam about, studying the Earth and its occupants, purportedly to rid the planet of all pollution. As it becomes clear that the Elongi’s tactics for cleaning up the environment have consequences more dastardly than some had hoped, Hiri heads home, while Chelsea stays in England. Along with friends, she leaves London for the Midlands, feeling it will be safer. While her journey around the U.K. becomes more complex, the Elongi’s plan for Earth brings about destroyed lives and troubling philosophical and moral questions. Mann’s fairly innovative take on the alien invasion narrative is a frightening one. The Elongi are enigmatic, authoritarian characters whose cryptic communications offer scant details of what is to come. They appear in the background, quietly meandering around, usually leaving people alone. Their power is absolute, however, and Mann is quite good at presenting the story in a direct and unsentimental way, even as Chelsea’s relationship issues carry equal weight with the aliens’ arrival. Chelsea is as in love with England as she is with Hiri, and as a young and hopeful student, she wrestles with questions of love and loss, issues over which she has little control. Some longer sentences don’t quite work, but the memorable story demonstrates how sci-fi can be both chilling and beautiful.
A smart and emotionally sound sci-fi novella whose timely moral questions and determined characters make an old premise relevant and intriguing.Pub Date: March 20, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-5003-3679-0
Page Count: 80
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: June 8, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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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