Alfie wears his heart on his sleeve as he narrates this generous serving of mush.
The third from the English author Parsons (Man and Wife, 2003, etc.) is a maudlin tale of loss.
The high point in Alfie Budd’s life came in 1996 in Hong Kong. The 32-year-old expat British teacher was enjoying his polite students after five rough years in a London high school, and he was savoring life in a special place (the Brits turned over Hong Kong to the Chinese in June 1997). Most important, he had met Rose, the love of his life, a young and exceedingly smart corporate lawyer, also from England. His first glimpse of Rose and her “bucktoothed grin” came on the ferry. (Cling to that image, for there won’t be many others.) Though no beauty, Rose is adorable. The two soon marry and then, just as soon, Rose is gone, dead in a scuba diving accident. Alfie goes into a long funk, and two years later, in London, he’s still inconsolable, unemployed, and living with his parents—until his father destroys his own happy marriage by decamping with the very pretty Czech au pair. Doesn’t his father understand that “you get one shot at happiness”? Now Alfie has lost domestic stability as well as losing Rose; the only thing left is his beloved grandmother Nan. But Alfie finds some stirrings of life when he starts teaching again, foreigners from all over. Rose had married him because he was nice, but now he turns quite naughty, bedding four of his students in quick succession; his fifth target, a feisty English cleaning lady, holds him off. Maybe Alfie has more in common with his horny old dad than he thought. A more promising diversion is learning tai chi. Alfie’s instructor, restaurant owner George Chang, heads a happy three-generation family that Alfie can only envy. And then it’s time for yet another loss as Nan bravely, graciously, succumbs to cancer.
Alfie wears his heart on his sleeve as he narrates this generous serving of mush.Pub Date: March 23, 2004
ISBN: 0-7434-5664-5
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2004
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
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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