Dramatist Stanton's first novel is a thoroughly satisfying thriller—simultaneously luscious and ladylike as it traces the cat-and-mouse relationship between a wealthy old New York dowager and the solitary artist she hires to help re-create her past. Faith Crowell is nearly 40 and feels—with some relief, some regret—that she's now safely past the age of passion, obsessive love, and unsatisfied longings. Concentrating on contenting herself with a solitary life in Manhattan—complete with cat, comfy apartment, and a successful, if hardly brilliant, career as a specialist in trompe l' oeil—Faith is shocked when grande dame Frances Griffin drops into her studio like an errant comet landing on a desert floor. The primly dressed, sharply opinionated elderly woman has come to ask Crowell, who creates artistic illusions for the very wealthy, to paint the ballroom of her legendary Long Island mansion. Flattered, Faith accepts, despite a reluctance to shut down the rest of her business for the six months that the project will take. She quickly becomes enthralled, however, as she enters the beautiful, marble-floored ballroom, hears the story of its single night of service as the site of Frances's only daughter's debutante ball, learns of the daughter's brutal unsolved murder a few years later, and realizes with an unpleasant jolt that she herself almost exactly resembles the dead girl. As Frances draws a golden net around the unwary artist, Faith begins to wonder uneasily why she was chosen for this project, why her employer seems intent on confiding all her secrets to her, and what, exactly, lies beneath the surface of Frances Griffin's public life. A truly wonderful twist near the end transforms this creation from lively entertainment to gasp-provoking, attention-grabbing imbroglio. Those few among Hitchcock's characters who aren't charming, unusual, and thoroughly likable are certainly overflowing with surprises. Pure pleasure for psychological-suspense fans.
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1992
ISBN: 0-525-93529-0
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Dutton
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1992
IN THE NEWS
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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