edited by Gerald Early & Nikki Giovanni ‧ RELEASE DATE: Dec. 29, 2009
A rich compilation, opening up territory for further exploration.
Running the gamut from accessible crime fiction to experimental efforts by critics’ darlings, this ambitious anthology offers a snapshot of modern black culture without being tied to a single theme.
Guest editor Giovanni mixes predictable big names with relative unknowns in the second installment of a new annual series. Edwidge Danticat’s “Ghosts,” set in a Haitian slum, features an aspiring young journalist who learns the hard way just how relative notions of good and evil are in his world. Less exotic but just as sharply observed is Colson Whitehead’s “The Gangsters,” which depicts middle-class youths coming of age in the Hamptons during the summer of 1985. An excerpt from Jewell Parker Rhodes’ novel Yellow Moon takes on voodoo, murder and vampires in modern New Orleans, while Glenville Lovell’s “Out of Body” is told from the point of view of an urban crime lord. Slavery and its bitter legacy are the subjects of several pieces, most arrestingly the opening story, “The Ariran’s Last Life,” in which a young African captive awakens to her mystical power. Kim Sykes provides a welcome shot of levity with “Arrivaderci, Aldo,” narrated by a bored female security guard working at a TV/movie studio. The surprising final selection, “Mary Jane,” shows a young black girl, one of the first to integrate a Southern high school, persevering over shocking prejudice. Serving as a reminder of how far American society has come—in some regards—the piece surprises partly because it’s excerpted from a 1959 young adult novel and partly because the late Dorothy Sterling, who wrote extensively about African-American subjects, happened to be white.
A rich compilation, opening up territory for further exploration.Pub Date: Dec. 29, 2009
ISBN: 978-0-553-80690-8
Page Count: 320
Publisher: One World/Random House
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2009
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by Hanya Yanagihara ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 10, 2015
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.
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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
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by Michael Crichton ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 7, 1990
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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