A sometimes-stereotypical tale of university life, but readers steeped in academia will appreciate and identify with...
A professor faces the drama of academia and the emotional demands of family life in Senturia’s debut novel about work and ambition.
Martin Quint and his wife, Jenny, are trying to conceive a child. If that weren’t stressful enough, he’s about to start another semester at the Cambridge Technology Institute—teaching the “Circuits & Electronics” class, advising grad students, and hurtling toward a deadline to submit a proposal to DARPA (the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency). On the same day that he tries to manage an upset colleague whose paper has been rejected, he’s invited to participate in the university’s highly confidential Personnel Committee. His first assignment is to advise the tenure application of his fellow professor Kat Rodriguez. His attention to Kat makes Jenny jealous as she juggles an interior design job, the care of her 4-year-old son from her first marriage, Martin’s absences due an intense workload, and finally, a pregnancy. Meanwhile, Kat prepares her stellar tenure record, despite grumblings from the tenure review panel that research grants more tenure than teaching experience. Just when Jenny needs Martin most, he accompanies Kat to a conference in Istanbul, fanning the flames of his wife’s resentment. The couple comes together in time to welcome a baby daughter into the world, but that joy is quickly dampened when someone steals Martin’s backpack, which contains confidential documents about Kat’s application. The novel comes to a crescendo as Kat hears the final tenure decision, Martin receives an unexpected job offer, and Jenny and Martin try to meet their family goals. The chapters move along quickly and the dialogue is true to life, particularly between Jenny and Martin as they navigate the bumpy road of marriage. The initially overwhelming amount of academic jargon (which doesn’t even define what DARPA stands for) eventually becomes less important as Senturia establishes the characters’ wants and needs. It’s a shame, though, that there are stereotypes among the players: for example, Felice, Martin’s West African assistant, is described as “coal black,” and women characters often cry, whether they’re a professor, student, wife, or sister. More nuance in these and other characterizations would have elevated this novel.
A sometimes-stereotypical tale of university life, but readers steeped in academia will appreciate and identify with Martin’s problems.Pub Date: Nov. 9, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-4602-7468-2
Page Count: 288
Publisher: FriesenPress
Review Posted Online: March 16, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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