Conventional ghost-story/romancer about a drifter who brings love, confusion, and, finally, a torrential downpour to an arid North Dakota burg. Long-haired, muscularly handsome Tom Keatley wanders from town to town paying for his next drink by winning $50 barroom bets that he has a psychic ability to make it rain. Alas, he's not very good at exploiting his talent, and, besides, he can't stay in one place too long before bad memories of his abusive father catch up with him. Karen Grange, a former compulsive shopper, is now trying to make amends for piling up a mountain of credit-card debt as the sole employee of an out-of-state bank. She can't bear to foreclose on another farm, but that's about all she's done since being transferred to the Badlands hamlet of Goodlands. Freak accidents and three years of drought have just about destroyed the town's agricultural economy. Of course, Karen—tall, darkly beautiful, and alienated from the heartland types around her—has no reason to suspect that the hideous corpse of a woman who's been dead for a century and who's been accidentally exhumed on Karen's property could possibly have anything to do with so much bad luck. Then, on an appropriately dusty day, Keatley arrives on her doorstep. Karen can't recall sending the letter that summoned him, but she pilfers funds from her bank to pay him a $2,500 deposit to end Goodlands' drought. Business and passion combine as Keatley discovers an evil spirit that possesses some of the town's inhabitants, and forces them to say ``ashes to ashes, dust to dust'' while they perform acts of mayhem. A few neighbors think the elimination of Keatley and Karen just might solve all their problems, forcing the story to a predictable storm-tossed climax. Canadian writer Moloney's second novel (but first to appear here) is a tepid Horse Whisperer rewrite using Stephen King conventions even too worn and weary for him. (Film rights to Paramount; Book-of-the-Month Club/Quality Paperback Book Club selection; $350,000 ad/promo; author tour)
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1997
ISBN: 0-385-31829-4
Page Count: 386
Publisher: Delacorte
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1997
BOOK REVIEW
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.
A violent surfacing of adolescence (which has little in common with Tarkington's earlier, broadly comic, Seventeen) has a compulsive impact.
"Nobody big except me" is the dream world of Holden Caulfield and his first person story is down to the basic, drab English of the pre-collegiate. For Holden is now being bounced from fancy prep, and, after a vicious evening with hall- and roommates, heads for New York to try to keep his latest failure from his parents. He tries to have a wild evening (all he does is pay the check), is terrorized by the hotel elevator man and his on-call whore, has a date with a girl he likes—and hates, sees his 10 year old sister, Phoebe. He also visits a sympathetic English teacher after trying on a drunken session, and when he keeps his date with Phoebe, who turns up with her suitcase to join him on his flight, he heads home to a hospital siege. This is tender and true, and impossible, in its picture of the old hells of young boys, the lonesomeness and tentative attempts to be mature and secure, the awful block between youth and being grown-up, the fright and sickness that humans and their behavior cause the challenging, the dramatization of the big bang. It is a sorry little worm's view of the off-beat of adult pressure, of contemporary strictures and conformity, of sentiment….
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.Pub Date: June 15, 1951
ISBN: 0316769177
Page Count: -
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1951
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
APPRECIATIONS
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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