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THE ERROR OF OUR WAYS

Name: THE ERROR OF OUR WAYS
Author: David Carkeet
ISBN: 0-8050-4502-3

by David Carkeet ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 1, 1997

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The sorrows of Job are visited upon a St. Louis nut salesman, with hilarious results, in Carkeet's (The Full Catastrophe, 1990, etc.) wry updating of the biblical tragedy. Ben Hudnut, when we first meet him, seems to have things more or less figured out. Happily married and the father of four daughters, he runs a successful business distributing nuts to most of the retailers in the Midwest and quite a few farther afield. Living in his newly acquired dream house with wife Susan, who writes children's books and tends the kids, there are times when the unreflective Ben sees himself ``as a man who could do everything—raise good kids, run a solid business, and have an affair. He was `larger than life.' But the truth was, he was exactly life-size.'' The true extent of his limitations becomes painfully clear when Ben's secretary absconds with $250,000 of his company's funds, putting him on the brink of bankruptcy overnight. As if this weren't enough, one of his daughters seems to be having an affair with her high-school teacher; the teacher himself attempts to blackmail Ben into silence by intimating that he knows a thing or two about what passed between Ben and another woman a few years back. And Ben's wife, meanwhile, has become the object of rather serious attention from Jeremy Cook, an unemployed linguist married to a bitchy college professor down the block. This convergence of misfortunes succeeds, as such trials invariably will, in revealing Ben's true character to himself for the first time. Long before he manages to make sense of his plight, however, he somehow succeeds in overcoming it—and it is in his response to fate, rather than in his grasp of it, that he shows what he is really made of. Witty, good-natured, and completely convincing: Carkeet has managed, with sympathy and charm, to trace the exceptional adventures of an utterly ordinary man.

Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1997

ISBN: 0-8050-4502-3

Page Count: 320

Publisher: Henry Holt

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1996

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

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THE CATCHER IN THE RYE

by J.D. Salinger ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 15, 1951

A strict report, worthy of sympathy.

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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

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

- SEEN & HEARD
Salinger Focus of NYPL Exhibit

- SEEN & HEARD
NYC Mayoral Candidates Name Favorite Gotham Books

- APPRECIATIONS
Holden Caulfield: Forever Young

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JURASSIC PARK

by Michael Crichton ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 7, 1990

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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.