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THE SELECT

Wilson switches from horror (Nightworld, 1992) to medical suspense and strikes notes that harmonize Robin Cook's Coma with John Grisham's The Firm and The Pelican Brief. The evidence is that he's livelier at horror. As in Grisham's The Firm, Wilson posits a superrich fantasy establishment—The Ingraham College of Medicine—that offers state- of-the-art equipment and a vastly high-level education, all of it tuition-free!—if you can only fit the profile demanded by the faculty. Yes, any outfit this fantastic must have something wrong with it, even though it's funded by the Kleederman Foundation and based on the Kleederman billions from advanced drugs. For one thing, you aren't allowed to leave the campus and break the school's spell on you. It's young Quinn Clery, one of the very few young women admitted to first-year studies, who accidentally breaks through the veil hiding The Ingraham's activities from the outer world. There's absolutely no doubt that The Ingraham and the Kleederman Foundation do good work, save lives with new drugs, and focus much of their research on poor inner-city hospitals, where most graduates wind up. All very noble. But Quinn's boyfriend- -fellow student Tim Brown, a whiz with a photographic memory who induces her to take a short trip with him to Atlantic City, where he counts cards at blackjack and wins $2,000 in an hour—discovers the reason why Quinn seems never quite to fit in at the college: all students' beds are bugged with electronic devices for subliminally influencing them into becoming inner-city patriots of medicine, but Quinn's bug apparently doesn't work on her, and she forever brings up arguments against the school's do-gooder ethic. It turns out that The Ingraham is actually a warehouse for illegally testing advanced drugs on living patients, the same job practiced by the do-gooders in the inner-city hospitals.... Opens strongly but that feeble chase-ending defeats praise.

Pub Date: Feb. 18, 1994

ISBN: 0-688-04618-5

Page Count: 356

Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 1993

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A LITTLE LIFE

The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.

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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

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MAGIC HOUR

Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.

Sisters work together to solve a child-abandonment case.

Ellie and Julia Cates have never been close. Julia is shy and brainy; Ellie gets by on charm and looks. Their differences must be tossed aside when a traumatized young girl wanders in from the forest into their hometown in Washington. The sisters’ professional skills are put to the test. Julia is a world-renowned child psychologist who has lost her edge. She is reeling from a case that went publicly sour. Though she was cleared of all wrongdoing, Julia’s name was tarnished, forcing her to shutter her Beverly Hills practice. Ellie Barton is the local police chief in Rain Valley, who’s never faced a tougher case. This is her chance to prove she is more than just a fading homecoming queen, but a scarcity of clues and a reluctant victim make locating the girl’s parents nearly impossible. Ellie places an SOS call to her sister; she needs an expert to rehabilitate this wild-child who has been living outside of civilization for years. Confronted with her professional demons, Julia once again has the opportunity to display her talents and salvage her reputation. Hannah (The Things We Do for Love, 2004, etc.) is at her best when writing from the girl’s perspective. The feral wolf-child keeps the reader interested long after the other, transparent characters have grown tiresome. Hannah’s torturously over-written romance passages are stale, but there are surprises in store as the sisters set about unearthing Alice’s past and creating a home for her.

Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.

Pub Date: March 1, 2006

ISBN: 0-345-46752-3

Page Count: 400

Publisher: Ballantine

Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2005

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