Although the scenes are impeccably handled and laughs abound, the ending seems arbitrary and abrupt. This would make a great...
A young woman is recruited by her sisters to “squat” in a high-priced Manhattan co-op while they settle their inheritance claim, in playwright Rebeck’s second novel (Three Girls and Their Brother, 2008).
Rebeck’s background as a dramatist is immediately apparent in her trenchant dialogue and in the monologue-ready ruminations of her first-person narrator, Tina Finn. Tina, whose immediate past featured a trailer, a junkyard boyfriend and several arrests, learns at her mother’s funeral that she and her sisters Lucy and Alison are about to inherit the Livingston Mansion, Apt. 8A, a palatial slice of Central Park West real estate. Her late stepfather, Bill Drinan, an ailing, alcoholic recluse, had apparently inherited 8A from his first wife, Sophia. Bill left 8A to his second wife, former housecleaner Olivia, the Finn girls’ mother, whom he preceded in death by only a few months. Olivia and Bill had occupied the smallest, shabbiest rooms in 8A, and had, judging from cases of expensive red wine and vodka left behind, literally drunk themselves to death. The apartment’s formal kitchen is lined with moss cultivated by Len, the weird botanist neighbor. The apartment’s showiest rooms have stunning views but no furniture. In the wee hours, Tina is awakened from her own drunken stupor by other claimants to the property: Pete and Doug Drinan, Sophia and Bill’s sons, who grew up in 8A, have barged in to remind her that she has no legal right to occupancy. As the estate battles escalate, Tina is urged by the oh-so-controlling, tightly wound Lucy to ingratiate herself with the co-op board, who are hostile toward the interlopers, not least because Bill was (gasp!) Irish. A storeroom of poignant memorabilia, a secret passage between apartments and a ghost whose voice echoes behind the walls amp up the whimsy.
Although the scenes are impeccably handled and laughs abound, the ending seems arbitrary and abrupt. This would make a great play.Pub Date: May 1, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-307-39416-3
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Shaye Areheart/Harmony
Review Posted Online: Jan. 9, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2010
BOOK REVIEW
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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