Pomerantz’s tale could use a car chase or an explosion, something to relieve its earnestness. The proceedings lack the...
A pleasant if insubstantial rags-to-yuppiedom saga.
Robert Vishniak isn’t quite the dictionary-definition aspirational young lad of many a Great Jewish Novel, but neither is he a shlimazel Alvy Singer type. In the opening pages of Pomerantz’s debut, we find him in the fraught milieu of Northeast Philadelphia, with “miles and miles of Jews, families of four, five, and more packed into long, solid brick rows,” an Italian or two thrown in for variety. Having moved in after years with the in-laws, Stacia Vishniak is keenly aware of expenses social as well as fiscal, and she “believed that hearing what things cost was good for children, like castor oil.” She’s right, though not without qualification. The years roll by, years of dogged competition with richer cousins, surviving first crushes and engineering furtive grasps and glimpses, and Robert finds himself paying attention to numbers, particularly the lottery number that will send him either to Vietnam or to Greenwich Village. The ’70s turn into the ’80s, hippies devolve into yuppies, and Robert suddenly has everything he ever wanted and more, which is never enough. Greed may have clarified things for Gordon Gekko, but it just makes Robert pensive, Patek Philippe watch and all (“waterproof, and platinum, with a large blue face”). What goes up must come down, of course, as Robert and his more ambitious brother Barry discover come that bad stock-market day of 1987—upon which, bless her heart, the much-put-upon Stacia, always an anchor and moral center, has the last laugh, for while all around her have been flying high, she’s been doing the sensible, boring things that keep civilization chugging along.
Pomerantz’s tale could use a car chase or an explosion, something to relieve its earnestness. The proceedings lack the pointed humor of a Joshua Then and Now or the pointed ironies of a Gatsby, but the tale is competent and readable all the same.Pub Date: Aug. 2, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-446-56318-5
Page Count: 528
Publisher: Twelve
Review Posted Online: June 2, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2010
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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