With a labyrinthine, but coherent structure, this tale about an enigmatic widower turns out to be as sincere as it is dark.
A debut drama follows an elderly man re-examining his life and beliefs as he awaits the imminent End of Days in 2012.
Somerset Garden returns to his home in Drums, Pennsylvania, shortly after the death of his wife, Nona. The couple had been living in Baltimore for more than 25 years, having abandoned Drums after their son, Cole, vanished on his 18th birthday. Somerset’s planning to renovate the old house but he’s also looking forward to the prophesied Armageddon on Dec. 21, the same day he turns 80. A former believer, he now blames a “heartless and imperfect God” for Cole’s disappearance and for a world wrought with famine, tsunamis, and other such calamities. He dives headfirst into his memories, recalling his angry, withdrawn son, who may have tried burning down a church. Even further back is the protagonist’s sadistic, hateful father, Blake, who recites Scripture while tormenting or beating Somerset and his older brother, Wally, with the latter often reveling in the parent’s savagery. Somerset’s life is filled with regret, including an inability to save his mother, Pearl, from the brutality she invariably endured. This may, however, be insights into a man’s fractured mind. He enters into frequent mental discourses with Nona and Cole, and converses with a porcelain-faced boy who, Somerset confesses, may or may not actually be in his house. The bleak, stream-of-consciousness narrative will likely have some readers questioning the legitimacy of Somerset’s recollections. The protagonist, for one, is inconsistent: unsure of his birth year but later settling on 1933, and contrarily asserting that God’s dead, absent, or a complete fabrication. Notwithstanding, Somerset is coming to terms with his past, including a fear that he’s capable of the same cruelty as his father. He isn’t reminiscing in sorrow, but audaciously confronting his failures—later scenes are both more revealing and more violent— and welcoming his potential end with open arms. Kalsi’s nonlinear approach is intelligible, with random voices in Somerset’s head easy to decipher: he’s Dutch to Nona and Pops to Cole. The author’s prose, too, is melodic, even at its strangest, like equating “misshapen country lemons” to baby squid.
With a labyrinthine, but coherent structure, this tale about an enigmatic widower turns out to be as sincere as it is dark.Pub Date: April 21, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-9907790-6-3
Page Count: 350
Publisher: Little Feather Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 24, 2016
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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