An engaging but subdued portrait of a legend.
Understated novel about the rise and fall of Czech runner Emil Zátopek.
Goncourt winner Echenoz (Ravel, 2007, etc.) recently seems to be specializing in thinly fictionalizing the lives of real people. Zátopek is a good choice for inherent drama; he was at first rewarded and then punished by Communist Party authorities. The decision to reward came easily, for Zátopek astounded all by running. For many years he remained an officer in the Czech army and received a promotion with almost every victory, from European championships to the Olympics. Echenoz emphasizes that Zátopek was not a stylish runner but instead an awkward and ungainly plugger—not pretty to watch but pragmatically effective. For a while he simply couldn’t be beaten, and for more than five years he was the fastest man in the world in long distances. While his specialty was the 10,000 meters, he also showed himself adept at both 5,000 meters and marathons, winning gold medals in all three at the Helsinki Olympics in 1952. Eventually, however, age and a punishing training regimen took a toll on his body, and he started to lose. In one telling and sorrowful moment, Zátopek passes through Orly airport on his way to a race in Spain and sees the usual crush of news reporters and photographers. “How kind of them to show up,” he thinks, “it’s always nice to see you haven’t been forgotten.” In fact, he finds, they’re gathered to report on Elizabeth Taylor, who has just flown in from London. When he comments on the Soviet invasion of 1968, his naïve and impolitic remarks lead the authorities to strip him of his army commission and his right to live in Prague, then to banish him to work in a uranium mine.
An engaging but subdued portrait of a legend.Pub Date: Dec. 1, 2009
ISBN: 978-1-59558-473-1
Page Count: 128
Publisher: The New Press
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2009
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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