A first technothriller from veteran James (Prophecy, 1994, etc.) with a snazzy Robin Cook-meets-William Gibson twist: Stiffs in cryonic coffins await the day when science will be able to reanimate them. That's not all, though. Appended to this already quite serviceable plot device is the possibility that humans will develop, through elaborate computer technologies, a ``postbiological man'' collected as a digital download to massive storage disks. Once the hardware catches up to this software miracle, people will be able to slough off their mortal coils and lay claim to the ages. Such are the various dreams of Joe Messenger, an artificial-intelligence guru at an MIT-like British university. Joe's life is all cryonics and crumbling domesticity, plus a dose of parental trauma (his deceased-and-frozen father, a cryonics pioneer, was prematurely thawed out by profiteering louts). He obsesses over his own mortality, the death of his first son, and his neglect of his second son in favor of a partly biological computer named ARCHIVE that appears to be developing consciousness. Enter Juliet Spring, a doomed young genius with not much time left to live, who captures Joe's heart and woos him into taking her on both as a grad student and lover. With Juliet's help, Joe downloads her brain and uploads her knowledge and experience- -and psychosis—to ARCHIVE before she kicks off. What happens next blends Frankenstein, 2001, and a frothy cocktail of futureshocks as Juliet terrorizes Joe from the dark side of the cybernetic veil. Determined to give her the body she wants, one of Joe's colleagues successfully revives a dead model and endows her with Juliet's intelligence, then places her in Joe's house as an au pair—with devastating consequences that force the reluctant professor into some fierce techno-sleuthing. Like Mary Shelley's venerable monster, an ungodly pastiche, but also as gripping and thoughtful as its Promethean predecessor.
Pub Date: Dec. 1, 1995
ISBN: 0-679-43733-9
Page Count: 480
Publisher: Villard
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 1995
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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PERSPECTIVES
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