By integrating themes of genetic research, ethical conundrums, unlawful death, and racial discrimination, this multifaceted...
A medical scientist conducts controversial experiments involving human memory and age with disastrous results.
Ten years in the making and an assured departure from the author’s Adirondack Trilogy, Holtzman’s (Forever Wild, 2013, etc.) fourth novel is effectively informed by his former career as a physician and geneticist. The tale opens with the death of Betsy Matthews, an African-American woman who perishes from leukemia as a result of her participation in a clinical trial sponsored by the local esteemed university and a financial backing corporation. The narrative flashes back to when Jason Pearce, the latest young, motivated faculty member of Virginia’s Bates-Bronsted Medical School, became obsessed with bankrolling his reputation for groundbreaking, National Institutes of Health–funded research into “gene regulation.” Personally, Audrey Meacham, an influential (and increasingly pessimistic) member of the collegiate administration, immediately captures his interest both scientifically and romantically. The two are married and have several children while Pearce continues his genetic experimentation. Holtzman cleverly infuses his protagonist with a smooth combination of clinical innovation and energized “path-breaking potential,” yet he also realizes these things require money, which seems to be the initial linchpin of the story. Pearce also exhibits a certain disdain for university politics and the manipulative biotech entities that dangle lucrative incentives above the heads of the medical school’s top scientists. That is, until he receives a timely and tempting offer he cannot refuse: to have his genetic research tied to Alzheimer’s disease fully funded by a venture capitalist firm that believes the scientist could be at the precipice of a groundbreaking discovery in human memory restoration. Once the literary groundwork is laid, the author gets to work amping up the suspense and the danger quotients concerning gene-therapy clinical trial volunteer Matthews, whose eventual fate throws Pearce’s formerly illustrious career and life into a harrowing tailspin of guilt and murderous negligence accusations.
By integrating themes of genetic research, ethical conundrums, unlawful death, and racial discrimination, this multifaceted novel delivers a brisk, riveting tale of greed and clinical malfeasance.Pub Date: Aug. 16, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-692-81019-4
Page Count: -
Publisher: Cloudsplitter Press
Review Posted Online: April 28, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.
Pub Date: July 11, 1960
ISBN: 0060935464
Page Count: 323
Publisher: Lippincott
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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
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