But like the soap operas it lampoons, the book offers readers an escape from reality, at least for a short time—and anyone...
Rowell’s sequel (Secrets of a Soap Opera Diva, 2010) about a soap-opera diva and her cast mates parodies the real deal with cookie-cutter characters, bad subplots and cheesy dialogue.
Calysta Jeffries, star of World Broadcast Company’s The Rich and the Ruthless, is back on the set after a stint in rehab, but it appears she’s more popular with the viewing audience than with some members of the cast and crew. Racist co-executive producer Stanley Mercury and Edith Norman, president of daytime television, really have it in for her. They engage in a plot to add a little spice to the show and make the actress’ life uncomfortable by hiring Calysta’s 18-year-old daughter, Ivy, to portray her long-lost daughter on the soap. Calysta doesn’t self-destruct, but mother and daughter knock heads on a regular basis, and Ivy becomes a diva both on and off the set. Plenty more is happening with the countless other characters who are part of Calysta’s life, and they pop in and out of the story so many times it’s hard to keep them all straight: An associate producer who’s married to one of the soap’s stars becomes involved in art forgery; Max Gardner arrives on the set, and sparks fly between Calysta and her new assistant director; Calysta’s grandmother, a stable influence in her life, falls ill; Shannen Lassiter, yet another soap star, becomes upset with a storyline that has Ivy stealing her Latin boyfriend, Javier, who’s also her boyfriend in real life. A veteran of the soap scene, Rowell swoops back and forth between snippets of scripts, first-person observations and third-person narration with such dizzying abandon, it’s hard not to suffer whiplash.
But like the soap operas it lampoons, the book offers readers an escape from reality, at least for a short time—and anyone prepared to overlook the author’s quirky style may enjoy it for that alone.Pub Date: March 5, 2013
ISBN: 978-1-4516-4383-1
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: Dec. 2, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2012
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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