A layered, challenging fusion of genres.
A sci-fi debut about a biotechnologist, a blacksmith, and an odd biological phenomenon’s effect on history.
In 1999, biotechnology engineer John Samuel Weston runs the Haddonfield, New Jersey–based consulting company Haddon Life-Tech with his business partner, Bob Fenwick. One day, he wakes up in Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital in Camden County, New Jersey, where he was admitted three days ago with an abscessed insect bite on his neck. Dr. Caldwell informs John that when he came in, he was dehydrated, delusional, and insistent that he “go back and save” an unnamed woman. Later, Bob’s wife, Katie, tells John that his partner was committed to the Lakeland psychiatric hospital after becoming obsessed with a secret project in his basement and some sort of “messianic mission.” Bob also suffered a severe insect bite while fishing the nearby Delaware Bay. The bites could be from greenhead flies bred by GenAvance, a company that John and Bob are courting for a biotech design contract. In a parallel plotline, set in 1774 Greenwich, New Jersey, an arsonist has been striking terror into the locals with a string of fires. When tragedy hits blacksmith Thomas Whitman, he joins forces with a Lenni Lenape Native American named Dan Fire Cloud and a slave named Isabel to find help from an unlikely source. In his debut novel, Goldhahn swings for the fences, combining complex historical and scientific themes. A deep reverence for history informs the colonial-era scenes, set on the eve of the American Revolution, which reveal such details as “Coffeehouses were enjoying a surge of popularity...as coffee was fast replacing tea as the politically correct beverage of choice.” Goldhahn also explains scientific terms well, such as an “epigenetic” phenomenon, which he describes as when “something from the environment...triggers the expression of the gene or genes.” Occasionally, narrative padding, in the form of travel details and trivia (such as the explanation of the phrase “Shay pah”), drains the momentum from an otherwise heady mystery. However, the bold ending makes readers’ investment in the characters pay off remarkably.
A layered, challenging fusion of genres.Pub Date: Jan. 30, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-9965551-0-4
Page Count: 534
Publisher: Rigel Publishing
Review Posted Online: Dec. 19, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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