An often thoughtful and provocative tale of slowly developing moral courage, despite some awkward prose.
In Martinez’s (Rigged, 2012) historical novel, a young white man of Cajun heritage experiences a moral transformation in the segregated South.
New Orleans resident Jax Badeaux is 15 years old in 1959—a time when racial segregation was still legal in Louisiana. Jax’s family is proud of its forebears’ participation in the Civil War on the side of the South, and his favorite hat even sports a Confederate flag. His own racism is like a reflex—a set of views that he inherited from his family members without ever thinking about them. Lately, he’s repeatedly faced predicaments that have challenge his prejudices. His cousin, Jay, who’s part Native American, is contemptuously rejected by the white family into which he’s about to marry—vile behavior that confuses and moves young Jax. Later, he discovers, to his astonishment, that his best friend, Mike, is African-American and has been passing himself off as white, and this forces Jax to reconsider the laws and cultural mores that led to segregation. However, Jax still can’t, as yet, find the moral mettle to defend Mike against the racist attacks of a young woman with whom he’s romantically involved: “I was a coward, and not strong enough to carry Mike’s cross. I had two weak hands, a weak brain, and a weakness for girls, especially Stacie.” The author presents Jax’s moral journey as a kind of American bildungsroman, and he intelligently charts his protagonist’s intellectual growth through high school and college, as well as his postgraduate experience as a police officer in New Orleans during remarkably turbulent times. Martinez astutely tells a familiar story of racial tension in the South in the 1960s and ’70s, and how its disputes dovetailed with those regarding the Vietnam War. As such, this is as much a work of social commentary as it is a novel, and the author uses his tale of Jax’s moral evolution to sensitively combine these two aspects together. Also, he depicts, with both candor and nuance, complex lines of social division, including within the African-American community, which confronted its own internal schisms. However, the author also provides readers with a gripping story, and not merely a vehicle for didactic homilies. Jax has a considerable amount of romantic misadventures, and under the tutelage of his frightening but benevolent criminal uncle, he gets involved with the Cajun mob. However, the prose is flat and bland, as a rule, and it can be repetitive at times; Martinez also occasionally indulges in shopworn banalities: “Differences are good and make life interesting. If we were all alike, it would be like all the flowers in the world were one kind, one color, and smelled identical. How boring would that be? Our differences should be celebrated and not divide us.” These rote recitations of moral enlightenment are mercifully rare, though, and they don’t ultimately undermine this lucid chronicle of Jax’s internal conflict—and of the nation’s, writ large.
An often thoughtful and provocative tale of slowly developing moral courage, despite some awkward prose.Pub Date: Sept. 22, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-692-14291-2
Page Count: 359
Publisher: The Lisburn Press
Review Posted Online: April 11, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
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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