Like its eponymous iceberg, this strained fictional mix of politics, affected profundity, and supposedly comic eroticism is as much about the obvious—a young man’s struggle to lose his virginity—as about what is hidden in the depths: Chilean history. Expatriate author Dorfman (Konfidenz, 1994, etc.) tells the story in flashbacks narrated by Gabriel McKenzie as he prepares a murder/suicide at the 1992 World Expo’s Chilean Pavilion, which boasts an iceberg as its main attraction. The action moves back and forth from Manhattan, where Gabriel lives in exile with his mother, Milagros, to his native land. Milagros, a political activist, left Chile with her son in 1974 after the killing of President Salvador Allende, and Gabriel’s life, further, is haunted by ChÇ Guevara, who died on the October day in 1967 that he was conceived, just hours after Milagros met Crist¢bal Mackenzie at a political rally. The couple marries, but in the meantime Cris has made a bet he will make love every day to his wife; an exhausted Milagros soon gives him permission to sleep with other women as long as he is faithful to her in spirit. This potentially funny and sexy device proves to be neither, and the discussions of Pinochet, capitalism, and Spain’s conquest become more rhetorical rants than perceptive insights. Visiting Chile in 1991, the virginal Gabriel is intimidated by his father’s legendary virility. Then he falls in love with the beautiful Amanda, daughter of one of his father’s friends, visits Antarctica to find the iceberg destined for the Expo, hears much political talk, and finally makes love. Distressed by a disturbing family secret (Amanda may be his sister) and by the lies and schemes that both he and Chile have connived at, he decides on a spectacular resolution. His dead Nanny, though, plots with ChÇ to save Gabriel and his family as they prepare to eat dinner at the Chilean Pavilion. A very busy tale that melts in the frenetic heat of its telling.
Pub Date: May 1, 1999
ISBN: 0-374-21898-6
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 1999
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.
A violent surfacing of adolescence (which has little in common with Tarkington's earlier, broadly comic, Seventeen) has a compulsive impact.
"Nobody big except me" is the dream world of Holden Caulfield and his first person story is down to the basic, drab English of the pre-collegiate. For Holden is now being bounced from fancy prep, and, after a vicious evening with hall- and roommates, heads for New York to try to keep his latest failure from his parents. He tries to have a wild evening (all he does is pay the check), is terrorized by the hotel elevator man and his on-call whore, has a date with a girl he likes—and hates, sees his 10 year old sister, Phoebe. He also visits a sympathetic English teacher after trying on a drunken session, and when he keeps his date with Phoebe, who turns up with her suitcase to join him on his flight, he heads home to a hospital siege. This is tender and true, and impossible, in its picture of the old hells of young boys, the lonesomeness and tentative attempts to be mature and secure, the awful block between youth and being grown-up, the fright and sickness that humans and their behavior cause the challenging, the dramatization of the big bang. It is a sorry little worm's view of the off-beat of adult pressure, of contemporary strictures and conformity, of sentiment….
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.Pub Date: June 15, 1951
ISBN: 0316769177
Page Count: -
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1951
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
APPRECIATIONS
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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