Nail-biting fun amid near-future pseudo-science.
Planet Earth is fried and fricasseed in this wildly suspenseful post-apocalyptic action yarn only partially set deep beneath the ocean waves.
Compared to the sun-scarred humans still clinging to life topside, young biologist Jesse Baines is living well. Pacifica—the secret undersea lab nestled off the coast of San Diego where he and a community of other scientists have taken refuge after society’s collapse—is a self-sufficient oasis far from the reach of marauding cannibals. Still, Jesse can’t shake the feeling of being imprisoned in this pineapple under the sea, so he longs for a chance to ditch his cushy confines. When an unexpected disaster threatens Pacifica, he leaps at the chance to take part in a risky reconnaissance mission to recover some necessary items stored back on land. What unfolds next is all part of an ambitious plot that evokes elements of The Road and BioShock, the epic video game. Pryce’s muscular prose is relentlessly descriptive and often times even poetic in its blood and guts portrayal of a world seared into insanity. A keen sense of apprehension and anxiety consistently stokes the engines of suspense in an inexorable march toward ultimate calamity. Things only start to lag once the door is thrown open and the boogieman let out. Although artfully rendered, the main villain here is either a clichéd madman (right down to his evil genius grin), or (more generously) a loving homage to every Hollywood bad guy who’s ever plotted to take over the world. The story’s deep, dark, terrible secret, meanwhile, is a conspiracy theorist’s fantasy whirling with fears of overpopulation, global warning, genetic engineering and cloning. Some of the plot points seem a bit forced in order to facilitate the high adrenaline set pieces, while at least two other story threads are left virtually high and dry. But vividly rendered characters worth rooting for and supremely orchestrated action combine to compensate for any listing that might occur, which helps keep this semi-aquatic adventure on course to a thrilling conclusion.
Nail-biting fun amid near-future pseudo-science.Pub Date: Jan. 24, 2012
ISBN: 978-0984669103
Page Count: 386
Publisher: Cenozoic
Review Posted Online: Feb. 29, 2012
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
Dated sermonizing on career versus motherhood, and conflict driven by characters’ willed helplessness, sap this tale of...
Lifelong, conflicted friendship of two women is the premise of Hannah’s maudlin latest (Magic Hour, 2006, etc.), again set in Washington State.
Tallulah “Tully” Hart, father unknown, is the daughter of a hippie, Cloud, who makes only intermittent appearances in her life. Tully takes refuge with the family of her “best friend forever,” Kate Mularkey, who compares herself unfavorably with Tully, in regards to looks and charisma. In college, “TullyandKate” pledge the same sorority and major in communications. Tully has a life goal for them both: They will become network TV anchorwomen. Tully lands an internship at KCPO-TV in Seattle and finagles a producing job for Kate. Kate no longer wishes to follow Tully into broadcasting and is more drawn to fiction writing, but she hesitates to tell her overbearing friend. Meanwhile a love triangle blooms at KCPO: Hard-bitten, irresistibly handsome, former war correspondent Johnny is clearly smitten with Tully. Expecting rejection, Kate keeps her infatuation with Johnny secret. When Tully lands a reporting job with a Today-like show, her career shifts into hyperdrive. Johnny and Kate had started an affair once Tully moved to Manhattan, and when Kate gets pregnant with daughter Marah, they marry. Kate is content as a stay-at-home mom, but frets about being Johnny’s second choice and about her unrealized writing ambitions. Tully becomes Seattle’s answer to Oprah. She hires Johnny, which spells riches for him and Kate. But Kate’s buttons are fully depressed by pitched battles over slutwear and curfews with teenaged Marah, who idolizes her godmother Tully. In an improbable twist, Tully invites Kate and Marah to resolve their differences on her show, only to blindside Kate by accusing her, on live TV, of overprotecting Marah. The BFFs are sundered. Tully’s latest attempt to salvage Cloud fails: The incorrigible, now geriatric hippie absconds once more. Just as Kate develops a spine, she’s given some devastating news. Will the friends reconcile before it’s too late?
Dated sermonizing on career versus motherhood, and conflict driven by characters’ willed helplessness, sap this tale of poignancy.Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2008
ISBN: 978-0-312-36408-3
Page Count: 496
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2007
BOOK TO SCREEN
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