Dark energy disrupts domestic tranquility in a pleasant sci-fi diversion with a family-hour vibe.
A college physicist uses computer technology to enter a parallel world in which she has a great family and an improved personal life—but also telekinetic superpowers that put all their lives at risk.
Smith (The Conservation of Luck, 2017, etc.), a physicist, here more or less asks: What is real life anyway? Thus she launches a series starring heroine Chloe Carsen, who is also Chloe Phillipson. Chloe C. is a science researcher/instructor at a university in Missoula, Montana, using virtual-reality technology to spend more and more of her time spectating on the goings-on in an alternative universe. In that cosmos, there exists a Missoula in which—as Chloe Phillipson—she is still a physics teacher, but one with a great “househusband,” Aidan, and two young sons, Trevor and Zach. Chloe C. realizes ruefully that her counterpart is a considerably happier and more fulfilled version of herself. But then odd things happen in the Phillipson household, as the two sons show telekinetic abilities (including levitating themselves), apparently inherited from their mom. It seems that Chloe P. can do “magic” as well, and it may be traceable to a dark-matter experiment gone wrong 15 years earlier and/or the Phillipsons unexpectedly being the next stage in human evolution. They try to keep their “dark energy” superpowers a secret, but ubiquitous cellphone cameras and social media put them in peril. Smith’s narrative voice, dominated by dialogue, is easy and brisk (rather like the one Ira Levin used for his female-paranoia masterworks, Rosemary’s Baby and The Stepford Wives), and even the science speculation comes in lightweight packets. Overall, the material reads like the kind of adventure novels that, in earlier eras, inspired Disney properties (especially Escape to Witch Mountain), but with some R-rated language and mistrust of authority. The big question for the reader is whether alt-reality Chloe C.’s eavesdropping on all this via VR is somehow creating the bizarre circumstances for the Phillipsons. The book’s concluding gimmick with parallel worlds feels like a distraction and not really necessary. But some readers may find it sets up the open-ended finale on a properly tantalizing what if? note.
Dark energy disrupts domestic tranquility in a pleasant sci-fi diversion with a family-hour vibe.Pub Date: May 27, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-9861350-8-8
Page Count: 308
Publisher: Quarky Media
Review Posted Online: Oct. 30, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.
Life lessons.
Angie Malone, the youngest of a big, warm Italian-American family, returns to her Pacific Northwest hometown to wrestle with various midlife disappointments: her divorce, Papa’s death, a downturn in business at the family restaurant, and, above all, her childlessness. After several miscarriages, she, a successful ad exec, and husband Conlan, a reporter, befriended a pregnant young girl and planned to adopt her baby—and then the birth mother changed her mind. Angie and Conlan drifted apart and soon found they just didn’t love each other anymore. Metaphorically speaking, “her need for a child had been a high tide, an overwhelming force that drowned them. A year ago, she could have kicked to the surface but not now.” Sadder but wiser, Angie goes to work in the struggling family restaurant, bickering with Mama over updating the menu and replacing the ancient waitress. Soon, Angie befriends another young girl, Lauren Ribido, who’s eager to learn and desperately needs a job. Lauren’s family lives on the wrong side of the tracks, and her mother is a promiscuous alcoholic, but Angie knows nothing of this sad story and welcomes Lauren into the DeSaria family circle. The girl listens in, wide-eyed, as the sisters argue and make wisecracks and—gee-whiz—are actually nice to each other. Nothing at all like her relationship with her sluttish mother, who throws Lauren out when boyfriend David, en route to Stanford, gets her pregnant. Will Lauren, who’s just been accepted to USC, let Angie adopt her baby? Well, a bit of a twist at the end keeps things from becoming too predictable.
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.Pub Date: July 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-345-46750-7
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2004
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
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