Very entertaining, and McCauley digs a lot deeper than most authors of popular fiction.
An assortment of gay and straight characters uneasily assess their relationships with long-term partners, in McCauley’s tart-but-sweet fourth novel (The Man of the House, 1996, etc.).
Jane Cody makes lists in code, trying to hide from her devoted but dull second husband, Tom, the fact that she takes their weirdly adult six-year-old son, Gerald, to a shrink and has recently resumed seeing her own psychiatrist. But she’s so burned out from her job producing a Boston public TV show, shadowed by an ambitious, gorgeous young subordinate, that she forgets what the code is. Meanwhile, Desmond Sullivan grapples with ambivalent feelings about his longtime companion, Russell (who sells 1980s memorabilia in a shop on New York’s Lower East Side), and frets over his lack of progress on a biography of obscure pop singer Pauline Anderton. So Desmond takes a semester’s appointment at the college where Tom teaches, and his work inspires Jane to pitch a documentary series on “the true cultural influences: forgotten mediocrities.” She comes up with the idea to impress her philandering ex-husband, Dale, with whom she’s once again sleeping, but it also looks like a good way to pep up her career, and Desmond latches onto it as insurance in case his book contract gets canceled (his editor’s taking permanent maternity leave, and no one else is very interested). McCauley casts his customarily sharp eye on the romantic and professional contortions of Jane, Desmond, and the brilliantly etched supporting cast, most notably the fascinatingly ambiguous Rosemary, whose bestselling memoir, Dead Husband, raises intriguing questions about sincerity and truthfulness in writing. It takes a while to warm up to the intensely neurotic characters, but most readers will be propelled by McCauley’s storytelling and razor-sharp observations to a surprisingly warmhearted conclusion that undercuts its own sentimentality with the lurking suggestion that “something that’s true enough” may be as useful as the “essential truth” Desmond seeks in his biography. (P.S.: He finds it.)
Very entertaining, and McCauley digs a lot deeper than most authors of popular fiction.Pub Date: June 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-684-81054-9
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2001
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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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