A cheerless and schematic coming-of-age novel, Florida-set, limns a thin tale of unsuitable mothers, weak fathers, and, of course, horribly messed-up daughters. Rushed to a hospital after attempting suicide, 15-year old Arlen decides it’s time to tell her story. It’s not her first hospital visit; that occurred when she was six. As her parents quarreled on Easter Sunday, she lost an eye in an accident while playing in the garden with brother Ryan. Arlen has had a tough middle-class life, growing up without love because her mother Olivia doesn’t know how to offer it. And, all things considered, perhaps she shouldn’t be expected to. For as Olivia, who came of age in the early ’60s, found out too late—one marriage and three children too late’she’s not a natural mother. She’s no good at nurturing or keeping house, and she should have been anywhere other than stuck at home with three kids. After divorcing Arlen’s dad, Ransome, she abused the children, left them alone without telling them where she was going, and became terminally self- absorbed. Still, Olivia’s not a monster, Woodbrown seems to suggest, but a product herself of a dysfunctional family. Reared in the Florida swamps, she was regularly beaten and sexually abused by her daddy while her own mother did nothing. She grew up angry, frightened, and insecure, qualities her marriage did nothing to dissipate. Arlen, who loves her mom, forgives the beatings and rejections but also feels unhappy and alone. Dad is weak and ineffectual, brother Ryan is weird, and little sister Audie too young to confide in, so she tries to seduce an older man. Nothing, however, not even the pills she begins taking in desperation, helps the hurt inside her heart. Strong, even controversial material, but diluted by characters too one-dimensional to convince, and too schematic to be moving or memorable.
Pub Date: March 1, 1998
ISBN: 0-385-48974-9
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Anchor
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 1998
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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