A convincing fictional exploration of human optimism and weakness.
Two Mexican American workers pursue dreams of independence in this reimagining of John Steinbeck’s classic 1937 novella Of Mice and Men.
On a warm spring day, two men arrive at a lemon ranch in Saticoy, California. Juanito Sanchez is much gentler than his huge stature might indicate. After the death of his aunt, who raised him, he’s traveling to Los Angeles, where his uncle runs a small grocery store. Because he’s intellectually disabled, his aunt entrusted his inheritance money to his friend and travel companion, Tomás Delgado. Tomás is sharp-witted and perceptive, but he’s unable to resist a gamble. He insists to Juanito that their lives will be better soon, as Juanito’s uncle has promised them both employment and shelter. Juanito yearns for solitude and stability, and Tomás looks forward to the freedoms that such a job would give him. To that end, he reassures Juanito that they’ll head to LA as soon as they earn enough wages as migrant fruit pickers. However, during their first week in the lemon groves, Tomás takes an interest in Celedonia, the lovely wife of the boss’s son, which creates tensions that lead to tragedy. Gomez (Our Noise, 1995, etc.) excels at creating a sense of impending catastrophe as Tomás and Juanito’s situation worsens. Tomás is a complicated and engaging character who resents the limitations imposed on him by white society and who’s haunted by his wartime naval experience. The narrative parallels to Of Mice and Men are handled well, as the author uses many motifs from the original work to very different ends. The story exposes the plight of Mexican American workers of the era through conversations that address the abysmal conditions on migrant farms and the injustices of a mass deportation effort. In this way, Gomez gives a classic tale new life and sheds light on an underacknowledged chapter of American history.
A convincing fictional exploration of human optimism and weakness.Pub Date: Nov. 12, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-73311-280-2
Page Count: 154
Publisher: Harrow Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 22, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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