Powered by a briskly paced and tightly woven storyline, Brownstein’s tale is a relentlessly entertaining amalgam of...
Brownstein’s debut science-fiction novel is a near-future thriller set in an environmentally ravaged and newly independent Florida where the largely technophobic population is bitterly divided over the utilization of robots in society.
The year is 2130—an election year—and the Republic of Florida is a political powder keg. Members of the Futurist Party, who collectively advocate a “robot-infused society,” are trying to get their mayoral candidate, charismatic M. Forrest Newcomb, elected to office. But the opposition is everywhere, virtually ingrained in a largely ignorant, prejudiced and paranoid populace. Gangs of drunken vigilantes roam the streets terrorizing anyone they deem suspicious. Idealistic robotic-engineer Cesar Komenen knows firsthand the benefits of living in a society that embraces technology—his cyber implants compensate for eyes damaged in his youth. Komenen deeply believes in the Futurist Party’s philosophy, and wants nothing more than to live a peaceful and technologically improved existence in Lake Worth with his girlfriend Jewel, who works as dispatcher at a “macroshrimp” and oyster farm. But as Election Day looms, Komenen inadvertently becomes a conspirator in a mind-bogglingly elaborate and far-reaching scheme that includes mass brainwashing, murder and political manipulation of the highest order. While the themes examined aren’t exactly new—Asimov’s I, Robot; Levin’s Stepford Wives; etc.—Brownstein’s vividly detailed descriptions of a planet plagued by global warming are intriguing. His detailed account of the events that led to a fractured United States is simultaneously insightful and provocative. (“The breakup of the USA is a symptom of our distrust of the past.”) Additionally, the novel is complemented by a handful of stylish illustrations by artist Jon Sideriadis.
Powered by a briskly paced and tightly woven storyline, Brownstein’s tale is a relentlessly entertaining amalgam of science-fiction mystery and dystopic thriller, with a healthy dose of satire and social commentary thrown in for good measure.Pub Date: Jan. 3, 2011
ISBN: 978-0983260905
Page Count: 492
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: March 30, 2011
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
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
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