All that is good and all that troubles African-American life weaves through the late bestselling author Harris' (In My Father's House, 2010, etc.) final novel, composed in collaboration with Johnson (The Million Dollar Demise, 2009, etc.).
Cobi Winslow is a hard-charging state's attorney in Chicago, the adopted son of a wealthy manufacturer of African-American hair-care products. But Cobi's life changes dramatically after his parents are killed in a plane crash. He is left guilty and confused, having learned only days before the accident that he has a twin brother, a child not adopted because his father only wanted one son. Cobi's relationship with his father had been troubled since his father discovered Cobi in a homosexual tryst with a high-school classmate. Now in love with a local politician, Cobi remains closeted. Cobi soon learns his father's will has a condition. He will inherit millions in stock and trust-fund money only if Cobi marries before he turns 34. The stock in limbo is essential to maintain family control, as Cobi's sister, Sissy, a business whiz and interim CEO, discovers. Sissy hatches a plan to arrange a marriage for Cobi, but Cobi is focused on finding his twin and, deus ex machina, Cobi stumbles on his brother, Eric, while doing legal work at a prison where Eric is finishing a sentence. Much to Sissy's dismay, Cobi invites Eric to live with him, but that doesn't stop Sissy from adding a marriage candidate to the household, Austen Greer, a realtor in financial straits. The narrative moves quickly, but the characters and setting seem stereotypical. The Winslows move in a prosperous, influential and educated African-American social milieu. There's much mention of skin tone, brand names and trendy restaurants. Conversely, Eric, and his prison friend, Blac, the catalyst for the story's conclusion, are poorly educated, involved with drugs or products of a failed system. Chapters are short, many presented in the first-person from Cobi's point of view, and there's a conclusion with a surprising twist, albeit one that leaves a plot point adrift. Sure to appeal to Harris fans.
Pub Date: June 7, 2011
ISBN: 978-1-4391-7809-6
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2011
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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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