Recommended for adventurous book clubs and lovers of reader’s theater.
A brief but emotionally weighty collection of imaginary dialogues inspired by the work of American psychotherapist Ira Progoff, who, in the 1960s, popularized therapeutic journaling as a means of self-discovery.
Many readers may have a vague notion of what a Socratic dialogue is: a prose literary form in which characters discuss moral and philosophical problems. French philosopher Denis Diderot and writers Edgar Allan Poe, Oscar Wilde and Aldous Huxley all produced fine examples that predate the self-help industry’s generally dolorous take, and there have been stellar contemporary versions by Canadian poet Anne Carson (Autobiography of Red: A Novel in Verse, 1998) and the Pulitzer Prize–winning A.R. Gurney (Love Letters, 1989). In this intensely personal collection, Mulhern (Seventeen Steps to the Edge, 2011) stages a series of chats with various archetypes (Death, his Future Self, Time) about metaphysics and overcrowding; with possibly real people (Abe the Auschwitz survivor, two suicide hotline callers) who discuss love, regret, hope, despair and other topics; and with some tricky personifications (Addiction, Obsession/Compulsion, Silence) who ponder pretty much everything else. The author sets all of these dialogues in the void name-checked in the book’s title; “In fact,” he clarifies in the introduction, “it seems to me that the abyss is that which lies just beyond the borders of our sanity, our longings and the familiar illusions we think of as our lives.” While such Twilight Zone–inflected intellectual musings may not appeal to some readers, the author’s charming sincerity and surprisingly light touch keep it all from becoming impenetrable, whether his characters discuss the Holocaust or the intricate origins of a man’s foot fetish. The best debates offer up truths with a dash of sly, vaudeville humor, like a mashup of Jean Genet and Samuel Beckett as declaimed by Abbott and Costello; for example, witness the author’s double act with Time: “SM: Is there time after we die? / Time: There is no such thing before you die. Everything exists at once. / SM: What happens to all the atoms in the universe when it finally dies? / Time: They apply for unemployment. / SM: Seriously?”
Recommended for adventurous book clubs and lovers of reader’s theater.Pub Date: March 21, 2013
ISBN: 978-1770978904
Page Count: 104
Publisher: FriesenPress
Review Posted Online: July 9, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2013
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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