Competent. Bland. If only real life were so nice.
Corman returns to the subject of his bestselling Kramer vs. Kramer (1977) in a feel-good story about the long-term results of divorce.
Rob and Karen Burrows divorced four years ago, when their son Tommy was 13. No ugly causes like adultery were involved, just the pressures of two careers colliding. Rob, who manufactures playground equipment, has remarried well: Vickie is a warmhearted, divorced mother of two. Karen, who runs a crafts-store/gallery in Manhattan’s Soho, is involved in a comfortable, undemanding relationship with Bill, a widower. As Tommy approaches high school graduation, he’s a well-adjusted, likable kid whose wit comes out in the cartoons he writes for the school paper. High-achievers that they are, Rob and Karen grudgingly accept that Tommy’s grades and SAT scores limit his college choices. He ends up at a decent small college in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, but after an unpleasant first semester experience, he breaks the news to his parents that academia is not for him. As Tommy establishes an independent blue-collar life for himself in Pittsfield, Rob realizes that he’s in danger of sinking his second marriage if he doesn’t spend more time with Vickie and her kids. Stung by Bill’s lack of interest in Tommy’s problems, Karen breaks up with him (but not to worry: another, even nicer, widower is waiting in the wings). Meanwhile, Tommy falls into a dream job with a major American artist who recognizes the boy’s artistic gifts and engineers his enrollment at Rhode Island School of Design. As Rob and Karen share their ongoing concern for their son, their friends can’t understand why they divorced. Readers may not, either. The two seldom argue, display no discomforting sexual yearnings, exhibit mild nostalgia. The tart realism of the early scenes, where the two do struggle with private disappointments and ambivalence, quickly dissipates into a sweet pudding of happy endings.
Competent. Bland. If only real life were so nice.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-312-32983-0
Page Count: 288
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2004
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
