Bausch’s engagingly deranged characters hold our attention, and somehow muddle through, in one of his more interesting and...
The interactions of several incomplete and varyingly dysfunctional Virginia families produce both sparks of contention and seeds of potential growth and change in Bausch’s amiable tenth novel (Wives & Lovers, 2004, etc.).
The setting is the town of Point Royal, described in an omniscient overview as an uneasy mixture of southern charm, quasi-aristocratic elegance and trendy crass commercialism. This is where middle-aged Will Butterfield runs The Heart’s Ease bookstore and his second wife, Elizabeth, teaches high school—and where Will’s now-adult children Gail and Mark grew up, then effectively fled from, after their mother (also named Elizabeth) had deserted her family, years earlier. It’s 1999; specifically, the months leading up to “the last Thanksgiving of the century.” But thankfulness is not unalloyed. Will’s widowed mother, Holly Grey, lives in a rambling old house on Temporary Road, in a perpetual state of impending war with her aunt Fiona (her grandfather’s “late-life child”—it’s complicated), whose eccentricities peak, as it were, when she sends Holly to camp out on the roof of their home. Local carpenter Oliver Ward, a widower with an occasional drinking problem, first butts heads, then becomes best friends, with “the Crazies” (as Elizabeth and Will ruefully label Holly and Fiona). When Oliver is hospitalized following a mild stroke, his divorced policewoman daughter Alison makes nice with rootless handyman Stanley, while her sensitive teenager Jonathan eludes menacing schoolmates like the hulking underachiever (Calvin Reed), who’s also harassing Elizabeth. Meanwhile, pastor John Fire (aka “Brother Fire”) labors to aid these embattled souls, struggling to retain his wavering faith and refrain from murdering a younger cleric, who writes hilariously bad devotional poetry. Then Will attracts the attention of sexpot bartender Ariana. . . . The book sounds like fun, and often is, despite shapeless dollops of overextended exposition and uncomfortably close echoes of Richard Russo’s Pulitzer-winner, Empire Falls.
Bausch’s engagingly deranged characters hold our attention, and somehow muddle through, in one of his more interesting and readable longer fictions.Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-009443-5
Page Count: 416
Publisher: HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2006
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
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
