Only with the title story—the 1887 journal of a psychic researcher whose most skeptical colleague fatally embraces spiritualism—does "Night-Side" suggest the occult; elsewhere it signifies the dark side of earthly lives: the quicksandy borders of madness, the fear of death, the pressure-cooker of loneliness, secret sexualities, hostilities, fantasies. In all but a few of these tales, Oates communes with a single distressed mind, invariably isolated, facing a crisis, self-dramatizing: the mask-wearers for whom the voices around them are a distant buzzing in the ear. A homosexual ad-man (others have closets, he has "The Dungeon") hysterically records his horror of discovery, his ambivalent longings for sympathetic Eleanora, his relish/disgust for the "Forbidden." A neglected daughter is reclaimed by her politician father and worries (wishes?) that an assassin (imagined? real? herself?) lurks nearby. A "Fatal Woman" muses on her God-given "power over men"—an illusion about to crack. A young, sudden widow is forced by a slightly more merry one to verbalize her left-over feelings and emerge from the protective shell of mourning. NearIy a third Of these tortured souls are doctors—death-defiers and mind-healers—who present the world with a smile of calm omniscience and, inside, are trembling with confusion, benumbed with panic, or harboring delusions. At her best when forcing us to join her up close (first person or an equivalent), Oates' weakest efforts—a houseful of crazies, a father who treats his mad daughter as a genius—stand back too far and leave a clinical aroma. And when she touches, briefly, on religion or philosophy, the tenuous control-by-tension collapses. This may be a monotonous collection; only "The Translation" (an American in untranslatable love behind the Iron Curtain) establishes a distinct rhythm of its own. And the writing often seems even more unlovely, slopping over into melo- or soap drama, than it needs to be. But most of these tales lure you in, feeding you their secrets stingily, and occasionally forcing a gasp or a sigh of real empathy for minds in disarray.
Pub Date: Oct. 7, 1977
ISBN: 0449242064
Page Count: 324
Publisher: Vanguard
Review Posted Online: Oct. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 1977
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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