A lively yarn about the gross but tasty sausage-making of politics.
An idealistic third party braves the snake pit of Illinois politics in this second volume of a sprawling trilogy on statehouse skullduggery.
In this continuing saga, the upstart E Party—for Ethics, Economy, and Education—has won a smashing election victory, picking up the Illinois governorship for its dark horse candidate, Baseball Hall-of-Famer Tom Robinson; four of six statewide offices; and the balance of power in the state legislature. Alas, sinister cabals of Democrats and Republicans gather to thwart the party’s program of government ethics, sound budgets, and education reform. The Republicans file for a governor’s race recount, hobbling Tom’s ability to push his agenda; the Robinson administration’s effort to streamline state operations runs afoul of obscure legal strictures; the budget bogs down; a battle royal over redrawing legislative districts opens up an abyss of partisan jockeying; and the education reform bill faces a constitutional challenge by the ACLU (for good reason, as the bill would force high school dropouts to go to school, enter the Army, or do some volunteer gig like AmeriCorps, which sounds like involuntary servitude). Arrayed against the plucky EPers is an array of foes: colluding Republican and Democratic election lawyers; Eddie Cobb, the dark lord of the Democratic National Committee, intent on strangling the EP in its cradle; and Javier Sanchez, a Democratic assemblyman doing Cobb’s dirty work in exchange for help in becoming speaker. Caught in the middle is current Speaker David Kennedy, a master strategist looking to fend off Cobb’s and Sanchez’s attacks and cement his legacy with education reform. There is much heavy-duty wonkery in Nemerovski’s (Third Party, 2016, etc.) novel, but the procedural of election challenges and ballot counting, redistricting maps (they now rely on computer models that would baffle NASA), lobbying, and arcane parliamentary maneuvering is engrossing; the mainly epistolary format of the narrative includes a few overlong memos but mostly unfolds in snappy emails and press reports. Unfortunately, while the EPers hold their own in Springfield, the Republocrats dominate the narrative with their colorful scheming, cackling, vote-stealing, back-stabbing, and womanizing. The EP characters are chiefly boring do-gooders who are forever telling one another how amazing they are. The donkey-elephant show is entertaining enough that readers should hope that the EP never pushes it off the stage.
A lively yarn about the gross but tasty sausage-making of politics.Pub Date: Aug. 2, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-68111-129-2
Page Count: -
Publisher: Wasteland Press
Review Posted Online: Feb. 7, 2017
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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