Often exciting and absorbing with a tough, hard-boiled style, but it could be more imaginative about future society.
An alcoholic detective investigating his ex-wife’s murder overturns evidence of a dangerous conspiracy in this debut noir-flavored sci-fi novel.
In the near future—only those over 65 can remember a world before the internet—three corporations control everything, and the biggest of these giants is Chicago-based Unitex. Nearly everyone wears implanted chips manufactured by the company to access information, entertainment, and communication. A few, like Chicago police detective Jack Waldron, prefer external links; radical group PURE, People United Resisting Enhancements, entirely opposes cybernetics. Ever since his young daughter died, for which he blames himself, and his divorce, Jack has retreated into whiskey and virtual reality replays of his best memories. But when his ex, Rebecca Witherspoon, is brutally raped and killed, Jack is drawn into a series of murder investigations and virtual worlds that at first seem unrelated. Though warned off, Jack keeps probing as the body count rises; he often encounters violence and danger, risking narrow escapes in search of the truth. With a few allies (or are they?), such as Cassandre “Cassie” Charbonneau—a PURE activist—Jack must crawl out of his whiskey bottle and confront both past and present to bring down a conspiracy bent on controlling all of humanity. In his novel, Lange combines the hard-boiled, fisticuffs atmosphere of pulp detective fiction with future-tech gizmos and accompanying paranoia. The near-future setting in roughly the early 2050s is close enough to readers’ own for its presentation of issues regarding surveillance and privacy to grab them. The author’s descriptions of virtual reality games, AI–controlled cars, and similar tech are engaging and well-written. But in ways large and small, the future hasn’t changed enough. An elderly battle-ax in hair curlers; sex workers named “Tiffany, Brandy, Amber”; a man who dislikes that his wife has more money than he does; a lesbian who’s criticized for “pretending to be” a man; a cinematic showdown in a warehouse—too many elements of this tale seem old-fashioned or clichéd today, much less 30-plus years from now.
Often exciting and absorbing with a tough, hard-boiled style, but it could be more imaginative about future society.Pub Date: March 19, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-9994370-0-1
Page Count: 314
Publisher: Pacific Arts Publishing
Review Posted Online: May 16, 2018
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
A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.
Pub Date: July 11, 1960
ISBN: 0060935464
Page Count: 323
Publisher: Lippincott
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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