A sharp-witted young widow’s progress through post—Civil War Washington’s power-centers dominates this breezy and entertaining historical caper from the popular author of Henry and Clara (1994) and Dewey Defeats Truman (1997). Thirtyish Cynthia May, a math prodigy, exchanges her unfulfilling job as a secretary at the Department of the interior for a career as a human“computer” working in tandem with astronomers at the US Naval Observatory. Assigned to perform calculations related to the phenomenon of the transit of Venus, Cynthia finds a body of somewhat more interest in handsome young scientist Hugh Allison, who more than returns her interest. But Hugh is a visionary who, inspired by the comparatively new science of photography, dreams of transmitting visual images through space and time and Cynthia finds herself drawn into his romantic orbit. This promising situation is seasoned agreeably by the influential presences of Mary Costello, a lowborn fortune-teller determined to protect her own prophetic interests (“You scientific fellas are takin’ all the mystery out of the heavens”), and of the real-life New York Republican Senator Roscoe Conkling, a wily political animal who means to bend new President “Rutherfraud” B. Hayes to his will and add the fetching Mrs. May (a counterplotter as adapt as he) to his list of amorous conquests. Mallon recounts his characters— respective machinations with good-humored energy in an essentially well-paced narrative whose momentum is unfortunately undercut by heavy loads of background information attached to each successive character. Conversely, though, he composes unfailingly graceful sentences, makes transitions expertly, and communicates nicely both his characters’ and his own pure pleasure in the spectacle of a vigorous country newly at peace and pleased to kick up its political and sexual heels. Gore Vidal still does this kind of novel better than anybody, but Two Moons is a pretty fair incursion into his territory.
Pub Date: Feb. 14, 2000
ISBN: 0-375-40025-7
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Pantheon
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 1999
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
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
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