Though nothing dramatically robs you of breath in this year's selection, Godwin has welcomely restored an element missing from recent roundups: sex. The last few volumes of the celeb-writer editions have seemed oddly neutered, but not so here. Otherwise, the split and mix between straight realism and writing-workshop filigree is about standard. Best of the realism (though it has by now an individual and characteristic self-consciousness) is Russell Banks' "Sarah Cole: A Type of Love Story"—about a handsome man and a homely woman, a tale of moral irresponsibility as inevitable as it is densely strong; and Sharon Sheehe Stark's "The Johnstown Polka"—about a disaster victim one-upped; a story more appealing for its quirky but confident voice than for its slightly hackneyed construction. Of the academic fiction, the most artful is Michael Bishop's "Dogs' Lives"—dogs in a man's life—and Bev Jafek's "You've Come A Long Way, Mickey Mouse"—Mickey on a TV talk show (bubbly and smart if more than a tad too browbeaten by the manic stylistic gestures of a writer like Gordon Lish). Some stories seem mere simulacra: E.L. Doctorow tries to make like Walker Percy, in an existential mode (but only comes up with paranoia), in "The Leather Man." Norman Rush does a mock-Naipaul in "Instruments of Seduction" (which is, however, one of the more skillful sexual stories here). Maybe most interesting, mainly for its unusual premise, is Bharati Mukherjee's "Angela"—a Bangladeshi teen-ager growing up as the adopted daughter of Iowa parents; while Margaret Edwards' "Roses" has a quiet velocity about it that suggests a moment completely removed from time, a hardeyed idyll. Apart from the Banks, though, little is memorable here.
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1985
ISBN: 0395390583
Page Count: 300
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
Review Posted Online: Sept. 24, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 1985
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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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