Zut! The French are the villains in this new futurotechnothriller by Navy veteran and military analyst Bond (Vortex, 1991; Red Phoenix, 1989)—who continues to write battle scenes good enough to keep the old disbelief suspended in a closet somewhere. The setup this time is an economic and military collaboration between France and Germany sometime after the defeat of President Clinton. The Common Market has given way to an unpleasant and unsatisfactory master-slave relationship between the two rich countries and still-poor Eastern Europe, as well as some unhealthy codependency with the Benelux countries and Scandinavia. Then France decides to ship its unwelcome guest workers off to Hungary to replace Hungarian workers in French-owned factories and at the same time sews up a dirty deal with the Germans to take over the continent. War becomes inevitable, and Poland, Slovakia, and the Czechs alone have the nerve to resist. But who cares? Their only friends are the Americans, best known for their dithering and political cowardice. Right? Wrong! America cares. With the help of rich industrialist Ross Huntington III, the President comes up with a tough plan to help those plucky countries hang on and, at the same time, punish the French for their decades of rudeness to tourists. Since France and Germany are old NATO powers, the battle that breaks out pits American-designed weapons and tactics against American-designed weapons and tactics. The Germans are gutsy and well organized, the French arrogant and craven. Trouble is expected from the Russians, whose president has been locked up by a reactionary general. Heroics are provided by, among others, a patriotic Hungarian cop, a Polish-American flyboy, a lovely American commercial analyst, a suave Russian colonel, and a former East German officer. Before everything is sorted out, the French will reach for their nuclear weapons. Rattles along at a nice pace. Gadgetry is subordinated to tactics, and that's to the good. Plenty of tank action for the WW II fans.
Pub Date: June 11, 1993
ISBN: 0-446-51567-1
Page Count: 608
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 1993
A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.
Pub Date: July 11, 1960
ISBN: 0060935464
Page Count: 323
Publisher: Lippincott
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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
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