A one-dimensional portrait dampens what could be a relatable story.
Duffy’s first novel follows a man named Phillip on his retail and relationship journeys as he works at a novelty store in Times Square.
Phillip works as a stock boy at a Times Square store called Milton’s World of Fun, which sells literature-inspired toys and gifts. Phillip, who has a college degree, wants a better job to gain financial stability and to be able to confidently pursue a relationship. When he’s rejected from the New York City Teaching Fellows program, he decides to focus his efforts on getting a promotion from replenishment to the sales floor; unfortunately, senior management isn’t supportive, and Phillip’s work and potential remain overlooked. In the meantime, Phillip tries online dating and meets Melissa, a lawyer who lives in Queens and has similar taste in movies as Phillip. They begin dating, but Phillip isn’t honest about his job: He tells Melissa he’s a teacher. Feeling too much pressure to get a better apartment and to be able to take Melissa out on dates, he eventually ends things. The situation at work continues to be discouraging, and Phillip has no luck finding a job elsewhere. Just as his relationship with Melissa starts to gain ground again, a situation arises that threatens to reveal his real profession to Melissa. The end of the book takes a meta turn, as Phillip writes a memoir about working at Milton’s. The day-to-day minutiae of retail can be humorous, with anecdotes of co-workers’ antics and supervisors’ mismanagement that will be relatable to many readers. The book, however, doesn’t let the characters entertain or become engaging; there is virtually no dialogue, turning most situations into dull summaries of interactions and conversations. The happenings on the stockroom floor read like a procedural—“Any item that was open, missing a piece or in bad shape made its way to the damages and an employee was usually designated to process the destroyed goods through the system by subtracting them from the inventory using a scanner”—with the omniscient narrator expressing the characters’ thoughts and motivations. Phillip doesn’t want to be categorized as just a stock boy, but the telling of his experiences ends up being rather flat.
A one-dimensional portrait dampens what could be a relatable story.Pub Date: April 8, 2014
ISBN: 978-1482693546
Page Count: 200
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: June 12, 2014
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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