Often searing and always provocative even if some of the uglier words or scenes can be distracting.
A man’s stories of Vietnam and his unique ability to absorb other people’s personalities may help authorities locate a terrorist in Schenck’s (The Dark Diceman, 2012, etc.) religious thriller.
Special Agent Ted Alignman, desperate to stop Mark Evans, the American leader of Islamic terrorists, finds himself at a Colorado mental hospital. It seems that Abel Jarrett, one of the residents, knew Evans during the Vietnam War, before he converted to Islam. Jarrett, an “absorber of personalities,” tells a story of struggling with his own identity, as Evans’ controversial ideas on religion garner him followers, and a mystical figure known as the Birdcatcher appears to Jarrett in visions. A crime scene at the beginning of the novel—Alignman witnesses the aftermath of a massacre attributed to the “Evanites”—is but a tease, a catalyst for Jarrett to relay his Vietnam history to the agent; his doctor, Peterson; and Worthington, a lawyer and fellow veteran. This leads to seemingly endless philosophical discussions of religious ideology among soldiers while the Evans subplot takes a back seat. That’s not necessarily a narrative drawback, though: Throughout his visions, Jarrett meets people already revealed as personalities, a brilliantly existential experience in which he’s essentially conversing with himself (and, to be sure, he speaks with a version of himself in dreams). It’s also a literal interpretation of an inner struggle, as two sergeants, Nicewander and Badlock, come to represent good and evil—two sides that, tellingly, aren’t depicted in stark black and white. Schenck’s descriptions of war are remarkable—exploding mortar rounds are likened to “Hell’s entrance gate”—but his unrelenting, graphic approach can be excessive; racial and homophobic epithets abound, while women get the worst of it, more often than not being called “whores” or “bitches.” Some, such as Alignman’s loving wife, aren’t even given a name. His views on religion, however, while not to everyone’s tastes, are refreshingly candid, openly examining different creeds and showing a person’s redemption as an arduous battle, making the war setting all the more ingenious and not a drastic change sparked by simply adopting a new outlook.
Often searing and always provocative even if some of the uglier words or scenes can be distracting.Pub Date: Oct. 3, 2013
ISBN: 978-1491709788
Page Count: 680
Publisher: iUniverse
Review Posted Online: Nov. 16, 2013
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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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