An intriguing but uneven Red Scare tale.
A man attempts to throw a music festival while informing for the FBI in this novella.
New York, 1953. Two days after surviving his first police raid on a gay club, music manager Bruce Harnes is sent by his boss to Westchester County to the home of wealthy widow Dora Berlin. Berlin asks young Bruce to put on a summer festival on the grounds of her estate, something that he sees as an exciting niche project to help make a place for himself in the music world: “A music festival outdoors on a great estate! So much to do! Dates; artists; programs; publicity. Parking! My God, chairs! My God, what if it rained?” It appears to be a dream come true until the FBI turns up, armed with Bruce’s sexual orientation as leverage. Because of Berlin’s long-standing ties to certain Russians (she had a relationship with a prominent Russian inventor that only ended via the intervention of Stalin), the bureau demands that Bruce serve as a confidential informer, keeping tabs on Berlin and passing intelligence to his FBI handlers. Now Bruce must organize a festival (with his ex-lover as the music director, no less) while navigating the world of amateur espionage with his benefactor on one side and the FBI on the other. Meyers (I Remember Caramoor, 2017, etc.) writes in a confident and stylish prose, evoking the setting and time period with concision: “There’s glamour to New York’s early winter dusk, the city’s nerves and energies throbbing as people stride onto the pavements eager to get on with it.” Despite the rather absurd premise (this is not a comedic work), the author’s general disinterest in genre conventions should suck readers in—if only to find out where this is going. Some of the players (the FBI agents, in particular) are quite flat, and the ending comes quickly. Several characters and events would have benefited from a little more fleshing out. Even so, the book is a strange enough brew of elements and authorial choices to leave a distinctive impression.
An intriguing but uneven Red Scare tale.Pub Date: Nov. 20, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-63492-732-1
Page Count: 87
Publisher: Booklocker
Review Posted Online: Dec. 19, 2017
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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