One spectacular sci-fi novella dragged down by three tedious ones.
Four semi-intertwined novellas featuring genetically engineered dogs and a troubled family.
Jenna and her brother, Del, live in a future England ravaged by war and environmental disaster. The seaside town they live in, Sapphire, is dominated by illegal greyhound racing. The dogs, called “smartdogs,” are genetically modified with human DNA, facilitating a telepathic link with humans whose brains have been implanted with special chips. Jenna’s and her brother’s lives quickly unravel, though, when their niece, Maree, is kidnapped. This tautly written first novella creates a brilliantly weird world that’s utterly riveting—which makes it especially disappointing when the next one reveals that everything you’ve read was created by a woman named Christy, who lives in present-day England with her brother, Derek. Christy dreamed up that world to escape from her life after her mother abandoned their family and her brother became increasingly violent. When Derek’s girlfriend vanishes, Christie suspects the worst. This story should be fraught, but instead it’s flabby and inert, save for a stomach-turning assault that feels as if it’s only there to shock. The next novella jumps ahead 20 years and is told from the point of view of Alex, who’s acquainted with Derek’s vanished girlfriend. Christy seeks him out to determine what happened to her, but instead the narrative gets bogged down by details of Alex’s life and an unsubtle, tin-eared examination of the racism he’s experienced. The final novella returns to the first’s dystopian future, although readers will likely find it difficult to work up enthusiasm for this now doubly fictional world. Maree is now a young adult with no memory of her family. She’s able to communicate with smartdogs without a neural implant and was raised with other psychic children as part of a scientific program. When she finds out details of her past, she’s left to decide her own fate. The book ends with a baffling and extraneous appendix of short pieces drawn from both fictional universes, which read like writing exercises that were never meant to see the light of day.
One spectacular sci-fi novella dragged down by three tedious ones.Pub Date: July 19, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-907069-70-3
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Titan Books
Review Posted Online: May 2, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2016
BOOK REVIEW
There are unforgettable beauties in this very sexy story.
Passion, friendship, heartbreak, and forgiveness ring true in Lovering's debut, the tale of a young woman's obsession with a man who's "good at being charming."
Long Island native Lucy Albright, starts her freshman year at Baird College in Southern California, intending to study English and journalism and become a travel writer. Stephen DeMarco, an upperclassman, is a political science major who plans to become a lawyer. Soon after they meet, Lucy tells Stephen an intensely personal story about the Unforgivable Thing, a betrayal that turned Lucy against her mother. Stephen pretends to listen to Lucy's painful disclosure, but all his thoughts are about her exposed black bra strap and her nipples pressing against her thin cotton T-shirt. It doesn't take Lucy long to realize Stephen's a "manipulative jerk" and she is "beyond pathetic" in her desire for him, but their lives are now intertwined. Their story takes seven years to unfold, but it's a fast-paced ride through hookups, breakups, and infidelities fueled by alcohol and cocaine and with oodles of sizzling sexual tension. "Lucy was an itch, a song stuck in your head or a movie you need to rewatch or a food you suddenly crave," Stephen says in one of his point-of-view chapters, which alternate with Lucy's. The ending is perfect, as Lucy figures out the dark secret Stephen has kept hidden and learns the difference between lustful addiction and mature love.
There are unforgettable beauties in this very sexy story.Pub Date: June 12, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5011-6964-9
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: March 19, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2018
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
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