A well-described setting adds strength to this coming-of-age novel.
In this YA novel, a teenage girl deals with family, relationships, and limitations, growing up in the process.
For 16-year-old Francie Mills, tennis is the only thing that matters and the only thing she can control. She’d rather ignore her doctor’s warning to stop stressing torn cartilage in her knee than go without the freedom she feels on the court. She certainly has no power over her father Hank’s drinking and how it makes him obnoxious and embarrassing. Hank coordinates transportation for movie shoots, and on location with him in Austin, Texas, Francie meets 17-year-old Chet Jones, who plays with Blues Harp Jones, a band appearing in the film. Like her, Chet lives in Southern California, though he possesses an appealing Aussie accent. He’s also cute, charming, understanding about her father, and wants to keep in touch. But Francie struggles with self-consciousness, anger, and her father’s criticism: “he made her feel like a big, fat, worthless, useless, nothing loser.” Eddie, a would-be Martin Scorsese and brother of Francie’s friend Stella, also likes Francie, but he seems safe where Chet is exciting. As Francie struggles with her feelings, her tennis, and her father’s alcoholism, she learns some hard truths and comes to a new understanding about human connections. In her debut novel, Schubert captures the melodramatic roller-coaster emotions that come with being a teenager: “Chet had to write to her. Or she would disappear into a black, hopeless abyss.” The theme does get overworked, however, and readers may tire of Francie’s self-absorption; at times, she seems more embarrassed by her dad than worried about him. Also overworked to the point of tedium are sentence fragments and many sentences beginning with “And.” It’s meant to convey urgency and drama, but overuse robs the technique of effect. A screenwriter and film editor, Schubert uses her insider knowledge well to provide an intriguing background for Francie, friends, and family among the nonfamous entertainment world of struggling bands and costume assistants. Another plus—Chet and Eddie aren’t black hat/white hat romantic choices but complex individuals.
A well-described setting adds strength to this coming-of-age novel.Pub Date: Feb. 4, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-9985202-0-9
Page Count: 316
Publisher: Earnest Parc Press
Review Posted Online: April 13, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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