A performance accident leaves a ballet soloist fighting for her career and her life.
This follow-up to Rose’s first installment of the Ballet Theatre Chronicles (Off Balance, 2015) finds the author once again tackling a dancecentric family drama, this time spotlighting the bond between two sisters. Dena Lindgren is shocked to find herself promoted to soloist ahead of her older sister, Rebecca, by Anders Gunst, the omniscient and imperious director of the West Coast Ballet Theatre. “You lack your sister’s looks,” the always-sensitive Anders tells her, “but it’s that very omission that makes you a more interesting dancer to watch.” Of course, this makes her relationship with Rebecca tense, but there’s something else throwing her life off course, “a nameless, fuzzy disequilibrium” that seems to be causing slight deafness and, during a performance of Spirit Hour, causes her to trip and fall. Twice. Doctors confirm it: there’s a tumor locked onto her vestibulocochlear nerve, and it’s going to bring her career to a halt. Meanwhile, both sisters wrestle with surprising romances; social media brings some of the ballet world’s dark secrets to light; and readers finds themselves caught up in the way a close group of dancers can descend into “high school-level cattiness all over again.” Rose is marvelous at subverting her readers’ expectations: at first, they expect Rebecca to be unsympathetic and opportunistic, but she’s far more complex than that. In alternating chapters, readers learn as much about one sister as they do the other. And the siblings aren’t the only two fully rounded characters. Their father, Conrad; the loyal Lana; the whistleblower Tatum; and much of the company are brought believably and even poignantly to life. The quiet beauty of the prose rarely calls attention to itself but carries the reader smoothly through the tale with no bumps in the road (“It all starts and ends with the artistic director. Casting in ballets. Daily rehearsal schedules. Careers. One word from him, an index finger raised, a frown creasing his brow, could change everything”). And the glossary of dance terms at the end of the book proves a marvelous resource for the uninitiated. This is a novel both for ballet lovers and those new to the art. A lovely and engaging tale of sibling rivalry in the high-stakes dance world.
Pub Date: Oct. 24, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-9860934-3-2
Page Count: 398
Publisher: Classical Girl Press
Review Posted Online: Oct. 26, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
PERSPECTIVES
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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