Gripping indeed, far more readable than Clancy, and as a bonus we get the heroes’ love lives limned in hugely amusing...
Mammoth, Clancy-sized novel, ninth in the Brotherhood of War series by immensely canny superseller Griffin (Secret Honor, 2000, etc).
Previously, in this and other multivolume sagas, Griffin has covered encyclopedic aspects of US military history, as well as the birth of OSS and US spycraft. Now he takes on the political passions of the 1960s, chronicling US Special Ops’ successful effort to undermine Che Guevara’s hopes of spreading revolution throughout Africa and South America. For this massive operation, Griffin brings back all the Brotherhood regulars: Craig Lowell, Geoff Craig, Master Sergeant doubting Thomas, Robert Bellmon, George Washington “Father” Lunsford, Sandy Felter, et al. First, the President orders Lowell’s Operation Dragon Rouge to rescue 1,600 white people, including the staff of the US consulate and 60 Americans, held captive in Stanleyville, Republic of Congo, by Joseph Olenga’s rebel Simbas, who threaten to kill two or more hostages per day if Olenga doesn’t get his way. As Lowell leads the strike staff of Green Berets, Guevara addresses the United Nations General Assembly to great applause, then goes back to plotting takeovers in Africa and Central and South America. Often telling his story through top-secret letters among the White House, the CIA, and other groups, Griffin’s smarts about how undercover ops are carried out blister the pages with irony and a towering wisdom as he holds each richly satisfied fan in the palm of his hand. Eventually, Guevara is run to ground in Bolivia. The CIA wants to ship him back to Argentina, but Bolivia’s president won’t give up the prisoner—and there the story ends, as foredoomed, with the famous image of Guevara’s wounded corpse stretched out on a table.
Gripping indeed, far more readable than Clancy, and as a bonus we get the heroes’ love lives limned in hugely amusing detail. Griffin fans will dance with delight.Pub Date: Jan. 10, 2001
ISBN: 0-399-14646-6
Page Count: 544
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2000
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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