Bellow has generally been considered our most intelligent and palpably stylish writer; beyond that there's the marvelous...
Mr. Sammler's planet will be terra firma to all Bellow admirers.
The novel is, as Herzog was, a polemic, or discourse—a dazzling discourse commenting on man and always searching for "what is normal for human life" through one of his put-upon, assertive, strenuously speculative dangling men. Or victims. But always, somehow, a resilient survivor. This time it's Sammler, a refugee via Poland and two decades in England, now in Manhattan (grapefruit juice on the window sill, onion rolls in a humidor). Sammler has only one good eye but it's "full of observation," as is Bellow's for the particulars which give his works such a crowded, restless vitality. ("His senses are especially alive to things and he catches the sensation that the things have created the people or permeated them"—Pritchett.) Sammler's a septuagenarian—too old not to be aware of his cleavage from the present generation ("Who had made shit a sacrament?"); an admirer and friend of H. G. Wells, he often wonders how long this earth will be the only hope of man; and whether "this liberation into individuality" has failed (Bellow has always been passionately involved with the unique needs and powers of the individual and his "contract" with humanity); and what will happen in that unknowable future. And of course at seventy death is just a whisper away ("No one knew when to quit. No one made sober decent terms with death")—in fact very close as the kinsman-friend who imported him lies dying in the hospital. Among the other things that happen here (always incidental, in Bellow): his witness of a pickpocket on a bus; his trouble over his daughter Shula (her "open elements" baffle him) who steals a manuscript in his interest, however misguidedly; the romance of his niece; his general availability as a confidant to the luxuriously sensuous Angela (her father is the dying man) and other; etc., etc.
Bellow has generally been considered our most intelligent and palpably stylish writer; beyond that there's the marvelous intellectual agility and animation; and of course the swaggering comic spirit which keeps Sammler, like Herzog, so triumphantly alive.Pub Date: Jan. 30, 1969
ISBN: 0142437832
Page Count: -
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Sept. 16, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1969
BOOK REVIEW
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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