The fourth book in Wilson's Lampitt Papers, an on-going chronicle of 20th-century England and one man's effort to understand a representative life—a life that has become shrouded in intrigue and innuendo. James Petworth Lampitt more or less defined the Edwardian Age as a man of letters, from a distinguished family, who himself was friends with most of the important cultural figures of the time. Julian Ramsay, a successful radio actor, grew up in the shadow of the Lampitts. Orphaned in the war, Julian lived with his uncle Roy, a provincial vicar absolutely obsessed with the Lampitts and their lore. In previous volumes, Julian survives the '40s and '50s as a young man of great promise, one of whose goals is a biography of James ``Jimbo'' Lampitt. Unfortunately, he's beaten to the punch by the genial and oily Raphael Hunter, who claims to have discovered all sorts of sordid secrets about Jimbo. Now, Julian comes closer to the truth about the supposedly telltale Lampitt Papers, at the time in possession of Virgil D. Everett, an American pharmaceuticals tycoon, convinced by Hunter that the papers reveal that Lampitt had sexual peccadilloes much like Everett's. But before Everett takes a long look at his collection, he mysteriously plummets from a Manhattan skyscraper, a death similar to Jimbo's untimely demise. To complicate Julian's researches, he falls in love with his girlfriend's sister, a Catholic beauty married to the hapless Fergus Nolan, a scientist engaged by the Vatican to advise on the birth-control controversy. Julian's unresolved feelings for his dead parents result in a nervous breakdown, but not before venting lots of anti-RC sentiment, much of which Wilson seems to endorse. Nevertheless, Wilson's shrewd take on the late 1960s makes a nice companion to David Lodge's fiction on the Pill, The British Museum is Falling Down. A must for fans of Wilson's Lampitt books, but not the place to begin—much here won't make sense to those unfamiliar with Wilson's grand narrative.
Pub Date: Feb. 1, 1996
ISBN: 0-393-03875-0
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Norton
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 1995
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.
A violent surfacing of adolescence (which has little in common with Tarkington's earlier, broadly comic, Seventeen) has a compulsive impact.
"Nobody big except me" is the dream world of Holden Caulfield and his first person story is down to the basic, drab English of the pre-collegiate. For Holden is now being bounced from fancy prep, and, after a vicious evening with hall- and roommates, heads for New York to try to keep his latest failure from his parents. He tries to have a wild evening (all he does is pay the check), is terrorized by the hotel elevator man and his on-call whore, has a date with a girl he likes—and hates, sees his 10 year old sister, Phoebe. He also visits a sympathetic English teacher after trying on a drunken session, and when he keeps his date with Phoebe, who turns up with her suitcase to join him on his flight, he heads home to a hospital siege. This is tender and true, and impossible, in its picture of the old hells of young boys, the lonesomeness and tentative attempts to be mature and secure, the awful block between youth and being grown-up, the fright and sickness that humans and their behavior cause the challenging, the dramatization of the big bang. It is a sorry little worm's view of the off-beat of adult pressure, of contemporary strictures and conformity, of sentiment….
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.Pub Date: June 15, 1951
ISBN: 0316769177
Page Count: -
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1951
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
APPRECIATIONS
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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