Exclamation-point-happy Cussler (Raise the Titanic!) is in zesty form here, inflating a balloon of nonsense that maintains a steady, technological-comic-strip interest. It's 1989, the US is energy-broke (dependent on Quebec's resources), and Navy Commander Heidi Milligan—30, divorced, survivor of a hysterectomy and an affair with an admiral twice her age—discovers a 1914 note to British P.M. Herbert Asquith from Woodrow Wilson, who laments a lost North American Treaty between England and America. And who is Heidi's new lover? None other than Dirk Pitt, hero of Cussler's underwater-salvage series, who's been secretly scuttling about the North Atlantic in his fantastic submersible, the Doodlebug, finding a ten-billion barrel oil deposit in the waters off Quebec. So Heidi tells Pitt about the missing treaty, copies of which were being carried, in 1914, by two diplomats—both of whom were mysteriously killed, the treaty copies sinking (one in the Hudson, one in the St. Lawrence). And what was in the treaty? Well, folks, Britain had sold Canada to the US for one billion dollars, to help finance defenses against Germany! So now the US president orders Pitt to salvage the lost treaties (remember that Quebec energy problem), and Pitt mounts both underwater operations at once. After excruciating—and quite exciting—recovery work in the sunken ship in the St. Lawrence, the treaty copy there proves to be mush. So it's off to the sunken train in the Hudson. But the train isn't there: it was diverted into an empty quarry and sealed there with its gold shipment, making quite a museum piece when Pitt finds it with its mummified passengers. The treaty is found at last, however, and so the president can address the House of Commons and Senate in Quebec, announcing that our two countries have been one since 1914 (and now we can share in the oil boom). Utter folderol, but lots of zippy fun.
Pub Date: Aug. 3, 1981
ISBN: 0553277405
Page Count: 349
Publisher: Bantam
Review Posted Online: Sept. 21, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1981
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
Dated sermonizing on career versus motherhood, and conflict driven by characters’ willed helplessness, sap this tale of...
Lifelong, conflicted friendship of two women is the premise of Hannah’s maudlin latest (Magic Hour, 2006, etc.), again set in Washington State.
Tallulah “Tully” Hart, father unknown, is the daughter of a hippie, Cloud, who makes only intermittent appearances in her life. Tully takes refuge with the family of her “best friend forever,” Kate Mularkey, who compares herself unfavorably with Tully, in regards to looks and charisma. In college, “TullyandKate” pledge the same sorority and major in communications. Tully has a life goal for them both: They will become network TV anchorwomen. Tully lands an internship at KCPO-TV in Seattle and finagles a producing job for Kate. Kate no longer wishes to follow Tully into broadcasting and is more drawn to fiction writing, but she hesitates to tell her overbearing friend. Meanwhile a love triangle blooms at KCPO: Hard-bitten, irresistibly handsome, former war correspondent Johnny is clearly smitten with Tully. Expecting rejection, Kate keeps her infatuation with Johnny secret. When Tully lands a reporting job with a Today-like show, her career shifts into hyperdrive. Johnny and Kate had started an affair once Tully moved to Manhattan, and when Kate gets pregnant with daughter Marah, they marry. Kate is content as a stay-at-home mom, but frets about being Johnny’s second choice and about her unrealized writing ambitions. Tully becomes Seattle’s answer to Oprah. She hires Johnny, which spells riches for him and Kate. But Kate’s buttons are fully depressed by pitched battles over slutwear and curfews with teenaged Marah, who idolizes her godmother Tully. In an improbable twist, Tully invites Kate and Marah to resolve their differences on her show, only to blindside Kate by accusing her, on live TV, of overprotecting Marah. The BFFs are sundered. Tully’s latest attempt to salvage Cloud fails: The incorrigible, now geriatric hippie absconds once more. Just as Kate develops a spine, she’s given some devastating news. Will the friends reconcile before it’s too late?
Dated sermonizing on career versus motherhood, and conflict driven by characters’ willed helplessness, sap this tale of poignancy.Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2008
ISBN: 978-0-312-36408-3
Page Count: 496
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2007
BOOK TO SCREEN
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