Not quite equal, therefore, to Robert Stone or Ward Just, but very much worth reading.
American intervention in the Middle East is the explosive subject of this ambitious second novel from the former war correspondent turned nonfiction writer and author of the memorable 1998 debut novel, Triage.
Anderson is at his best when writing about the world’s most embattled and dangerous places, and he has here invented a disturbingly vivid one: the fictional Arab kingdom of Kutar, a former British colony, in the early 1980s, when an “Alliance” of foreign nations conspires to turn it toward western-inflected democracy. We experience the country’s tribulations through the eyes of Anderson’s protagonist David Richards, a 30-something American diplomat based in the capital city of Laradan, where he oversees various make-work projects and carries on an active adulterous love life. Tensions mount when rebel tribes outside Laradan wage a series of small wars, arousing the interest of U.S. military Colonel Allen Munn, a stiffnecked control freak who advises, and receives consent for, engagement with the rebels by Kutar’s army, “aided” by Alliance forces. The rebels prevail (seizing and stockpiling arms)—and, since Kutar is not oil-rich and is therefore of limited strategic importance, the Allies depart, abandoning Laradan to a (blisteringly depicted) prolonged siege. Richards, who despite his personal weaknesses, truly does act as his adopted country’s “protector,” has a moral choice to make—and it isn’t the one that might have been expected of him. This novel is a mixed success: an astringent portrayal of “a place where talk of peace was reckless and going to war was prudent,” weakened by thinly developed generic characters (e.g., feckless ambassadorial personnel, an idealistic British diplomat, Richards’s impossibly exotic and jaded Kutaran lover Amira), yet vividly energized by its mordant dramatizations of intermingled American idealism and ruthlessness.
Not quite equal, therefore, to Robert Stone or Ward Just, but very much worth reading.Pub Date: May 16, 2006
ISBN: 0-385-51556-1
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 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
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