bookshelf

ZERO TOLERANCE

Name: ZERO TOLERANCE
Author: Thomas Richards
ISBN: 0-374-29662-6

by Thomas Richards ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 1, 1997

bookshelf

In sinuous, murky first fiction from ex-Harvard lit prof Richards (Imperial Archive, etc., not reviewed), the memory of Vietnam continues to plague the lives of four people who were involved in the failure, in 1973, of a massive dam built to control the mighty Mekong River. Thinking his brother, an outsider, can unravel the tangled threads of their stories, Harper, one of the four, persuades the emphatic Gailly to listen. Complex memories of other rivers and dams color each person's Vietnam connection: Harper's memories have to do with an idyllic riverside life that ended when the Monongahela was dammed, flooding his Pennsylvania home. He eventually became the commander of an armada of gunboats, patrolling the Mekong on the day the dam went into service. Petard, an American Indian and the project's chief engineer, who saved Harper's life, first became obsessed with dams when his tribe was displaced by one on the Klamath River; revenge drives him to engineering school and a career with the Bureau of Reclamation, where he quietly works to sabotage projects. Travers, a brilliant Harvard entomologist whose ideas of insect behavior fueled the Bureau's decision to dam the Mekong, finds his opposition to the dam shaped by the ancestral memories of a female Puritan forebear whose heretical notions of altruism he has unwittingly embraced. And photographer Jenna, whose images of the dam showed deep cracks where none were otherwise visible, had her feelings shaped by contact with the French dam builder Defosse, who believed that ritual human sacrifice was required to preserve a dam. Not until Gailly gets the skinny from the Bureau's director, however, can he make sense of the mix of anger, obsession, and arrogance that contributed to the dam's catastrophic failure. Often reminiscent of an exercise in multidimensional puzzle- solving, Richards's fiction debut is as alluring as it is mind- bending. Too bad that in the end the revelations accumulated here, like the imaginary dam that brought them together, fail to hold water.

Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1997

ISBN: 0-374-29662-6

Page Count: 288

Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1996

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

bookshelf

THE CATCHER IN THE RYE

by J.D. Salinger ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 15, 1951

A strict report, worthy of sympathy.

bookshelf

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

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

- SEEN & HEARD
Salinger Focus of NYPL Exhibit

- SEEN & HEARD
NYC Mayoral Candidates Name Favorite Gotham Books

- APPRECIATIONS
Holden Caulfield: Forever Young

bookshelf

JURASSIC PARK

by Michael Crichton ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 7, 1990

bookshelf

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.