The seventh volume in this now-established series is a welcome mix of stories by new and established authors, drawn from a wide variety of magazines, from The Black Warrior Review to The New Yorker. Of the 17 selections, five or so are from collections already published, including a lopsided and funny piece by Padget Powell (from Typical) and a strained and serious excerpt from Nanci Kincaid's novel Crossing Blood (p. 419). Lesser-known authors are represented by the often glib and predictable writing-workshop style of Susan Perabo's ``Explaining Death to the Dog,'' about a grieving young mother; Elizabeth Morgan's ``Economics,'' which explores race and sex from a young girl's point of view; Karen Minton's ``Like Hands on a Cave Wall,'' about a hobo trapped under a house in an Arkansas earthquake; and Dan Leone's deep-imagistic ``You Have Chosen Cake,'' an inconsequential road-story. Mary Ward Brown's ``A New Life'' deals with that old-time religion in a direct and sympathetic (though unbelieving) fashion. Lee Smith and Alison Baker serve up some middlebrow comedy about a small-town girl at a ritzy women's college in Virginia, and again about a happy pair of black Siamese twins. James Burke's excellent ``Texas City, 1947'' draws on elements from his Robicheaux mysteries; Cajun Catholics on the Louisiana bayou deal with death, guilt, and ``the nature of consequence.'' And the two most stunning pieces come from old master Peter Taylor and Algonquin's own Larry Brown. Taylor's lengthy ``The Witch of Owl Mountain Springs'' is a deceptively nostalgic tale of romance in the Old South; Brown's ``A Roadside Resurrection'' is southern gothic in the Flannery O'Connor vein, an over-the-top, no-holds-barred tale about a legendary backwoods faith-healer. Despite its regional focus, Ravenel's annual anthology nevertheless manages to reflect a catholicity of taste. No short- story fan should miss it.
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1992
ISBN: 1-56512-011-6
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Algonquin
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1992
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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.
