Amusing and amiable to a fault, but Murphy (The Hope Valley Hubcap King, not reviewed) has a deft, light touch.
West Coast potboiler about a hapless New Jersey writer’s adventures in la-la-land.
Newark boy Frank Matthews is a fish out of water. The bright and ambitious progeny of an insane father and a social-climbing mother, Frank enrolled in a writing program and got it into his head to be a novelist. That was his first mistake. Then, spurning his uncle’s offer to deal him into the family’s dry-cleaning business, he fled Jersey for California, moving to Los Angeles to live with his aunt Clara, who offered nine months’ worth of room and board to help him get writing “out of his system.” Not making much headway on his novel in the land of bookstores called the Happy Booker and suburbs such as Trillion Oaks (the author tends to carry his West Coast parodies a bit too far), Frank is out for a walk one day on the Malomar Pier when he runs into Max Peterson, an old classmate from the writing program. Max is now a big success, having published a bestseller (City of Breasts) that has been optioned in Hollywood for a lot of dough, and he invites Frank to come to live on his Malomar estate. Frank thinks Max is a first-class blowhard and detests his writing, but he’s glad to get away from Aunt Clara and gladder still to be reunited with Max’s wife Magee, who was also a classmate—and an unrequited love of Frank’s. Malomar is an endless swirl of parties introducing Frank to a bizarre Gatsby-like set of poseurs and lunatics who deconstruct Rambo films and publish feminist tracts (Of Mice and Menstruation, etc.) for large advances and 22 minutes of fame. But, inspired by his rekindled love for Magee, Frank does start to make progress on his novel there, until she begins to return his affection. That proves to be a major distraction—along with the forest fires, earthquakes, and power outages that plague the region. Welcome to LA, Frank: You’ll never be the same again.
Amusing and amiable to a fault, but Murphy (The Hope Valley Hubcap King, not reviewed) has a deft, light touch.Pub Date: Feb. 3, 2004
ISBN: 0-553-38244-6
Page Count: 245
Publisher: Delta
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2003
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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