A spoiled rich girl’s wakeup call has an added twist in Schmidt’s first novel—the tale is designed to give women step-by-step instructions for establishing themselves in the world.
At only 23-years-old, Morgan Demarest is kicked out of her boyfriend’s apartment with nowhere to go. Following the author’s introduction, Morgan quickly asserts herself as a shopaholic with a penchant for designer stilettos. It’s then that Demarest meets Divinity, her sassy fairy godmother who won’t tolerate Morgan’s whiny attitude. Divinity guides Morgan to a more purposeful life, and the story serves as an example for how women can give their lives a makeover. The book intertwines Morgan’s journey to find her life’s passion (an event planner, as it turns out) and helping women find their own life’s passion. Unlike most mundane self-help books, the story shows women how to reach their dreams without actually telling them. The “footnotes” at the end of each chapter further emphasize this point without preaching. Each footnote summarizes the lesson Morgan learned, including goal setting, finding a mentor, journaling, handling conflicts and making positive financial decisions. Although the story illustrates a person’s potential well, some aspects of the book are overdone. The characters don’t feel like average women; almost everyone starts a successful company, including Morgan, who at the end is on her way to being a very successful event planner. Morgan discovers her passion through her job at an art gallery, and, with advice from her no-nonsense fairy godmother, she figures out how to run her life without having money handed to her. Morgan’s journey is compelling, but the women’s desperate need for stilettos is exhausting. Despite these setbacks, the light-hearted story inconspicuously motivates women to do something with their lives. A subtle blend of counseling, motivation and entertainment that will make any woman buy the hottest stilettos she can find and reach for her dreams.
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-0615494784
Page Count: 270
Publisher: Glamour Press House
Review Posted Online: Jan. 23, 2012
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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