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FINE LINES

This tart sexual thriller, a first novel from Britain, will redden your cheeks with scandal and your thumbs with soreness as they race to turn each naughty, lascivious page. Alluring Anna Palmer (who is blissfully shacked up with her mousy American boyfriend, doctoral candidate Marty Westerman) unwittingly becomes the obsession of her boss, fussy, middle-aged London art dealer Donald Ramsey. Anna is sweet, smart, and sensual; Donald's flesh is seared by the platonic kisses on the cheek she gives him in gratitude for being a pal and career booster. He decides he must have her, but realizes she's too young and sexy for him. Favoring erotica over sex, trading art over creating it, and subterfuge over straightforwardness, Donald hires handsome hustler Zeppo Marks to seduce Anna on his behalf in hopes that voyeurism's vicarious thrills will sate his desire. For every obstacle that arises, Donald methodically counters with a plan B: Anna won't cheat on Marty, but Marty may be bisexual; have Zeppo try to seduce Marty instead. Zeppo grows petulantly reluctant; blackmail him with gay kiddie porn photos from his past. Marty won't be seduced; kill him. The buildup to and immediate aftermath of the grisly, cold- blooded murder are wound like a coil; the pace speeds, every chapter ends with a cliffhanger, and all of Donald's anxiety and thrills rub off on the reader. Then the novel loses some momentum: The arrival of Marty's Dad creates a domestic muddle, while subplots involving Donald's Freudianly depicted childhood and adult dating crises end with more of a whimper than a bang. But the big bang—a smoldering sex romp—is indeed a climax, and the zany plotting of the unlikely, but ultimately well-matched, crime duo of Zeppo and Donald remains suspenseful and comic. Wry, racy, and literate pulp fun.

Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1994

ISBN: 0-671-89206-1

Page Count: 304

Publisher: Simon & Schuster

Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1994

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A LITTLE LIFE

The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.

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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

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JURASSIC PARK

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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