Glimpses of the Montana landscape lift a gloomy narrative.
Two friends in their early 70s share the joys and pains of growing old in backwoods Montana in this novel.
When they were in their 20s, Ida and Martha spent time together in a commune in Kansas. After becoming close friends, they drifted apart, each to lead starkly different lives—“like the country mouse and the city mouse,” as Martha remarks. Ida put down roots in Boulder, Colorado, working in an oncology ward and developing a hospice program, and Martha devoted herself to raising horses. When Martha learns that Ida’s husband has died, the two friends reconnect, resulting in Ida’s decision to join Martha in rugged Montana. Ida helps out at the family guest ranch, which is run by Annie, Martha’s daughter (“The ranch nestled between two mountain ranges in Big Sky country—the Gallatins to the east and the Madisons on the west. In the distance, a curtain of Douglas firs edged the perimeter of the ranch, indicating where the foothills began their ascent”). Ida and Martha live together in the nearby cottage, where they have protracted conversations about friendship, love, aging, and death. But the course of Ida’s life changes once again when an unexpected romance flourishes. Fretz-Goering (Simple Life Fretz, 2016) is an eloquent writer who captures Montana’s wild beauty with elegance and alacrity: “The snow layers were light and powdery this early in the season….A gibbous moon hung low in the sky, balancing atop a mountain peak.” But the author’s handling of dialogue is less impressive; it is stiff and unnatural. When discussing grief, Ida comments: “You know how grief is. Finds a place to settle down deep in your soul and then saunters back at inauspicious times.” The message is sincere, but the wording is more akin to a self-help guide than casual conversation. Ida and Martha’s chats feel as though they have been contrived by the author to excavate weighty topics, but they lack the flow, spontaneity, and informality of an intimate tête-à-tête between friends. The novel is also peppered with tragedy, bad news, and sadness. In this respect, it accepts and bravely faces the uncertainties of life, particularly in old age, but many readers will likely struggle with its pervasive melancholia.
Glimpses of the Montana landscape lift a gloomy narrative.Pub Date: June 20, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5255-2389-2
Page Count: 444
Publisher: FriesenPress
Review Posted Online: Nov. 21, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
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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