Finding myself filled with an overmastering wish to find out what happened after Fanny married Edmund, and when Susan came to live at Mansfield," Aiken offers a smooth sequel to Jane Austen's 1814 Mansfield Park—with steady charm and humor, but with tidy sentimentality taking the place of Austen's more rigorous exploration of character. It's some five years after the wedding of Edmund to cousin Fanny; Edmund's father, Sir Thomas Bertram of Mansfield Park, has died while on business in the West Indies; so Fanny and Edmund, with a baby son, set off to settle family matters in Antigua—leaving indolent, self-involved Lady Bertram to be looked after by Edmund's hearty brother Tom (the new Sir Thomas) and by Fanny's 18-year-old sister Susan, who has been Lady B.'s live-in companion since coming to Mansfield Park at age 1.4. (Fanny and Susan are poor relations from a shabby naval household in Portsmouth.) From the start, then, it seems as if brusque Tom and saucy Susan are headed for another cousinly romance—especially since they're constantly bickering. Before the final confessions of devotion, however, there'll be an array of Austen-ish red herrings: Tom's insufferable sister Julia, a meddling snob living nearby, is intent on pairing Tom off with her equally snooty sister-in-law; Tom himself, a huntsman who's far from eager to marry at 30, plans eventually to ask for the hand of sweet, pretty Miss Harley (another neighbor); Susan finds a soulmate in a gentle visiting clergyman. Then, arriving suddenly from the pages of Mansfield Park, the notorious Crawfords reappear on the scene: vivacious Mary (once courted by Edmund) is now a frail, courageous refugee from a disastrous marriage, seriously ill; her brother Henry (once the dishonorable suitor of Fanny) now seems to be a changed man; they take up residence in the White House, a Mansfield Park cottage with happy memories for the dying Mary, who is soon being doted upon by fine Susan. But, though a series of events—a ruined picnic, Tom's fall from a horse, Miss Harley's engagement—brings both Tom and Susan close to the newly noble Crawfords, the cousins will end up blissfully together. . . after a teary deathbed scene (more Dickens than Austen) and the usual misunderstandings. Throughout, in fact, Aiken's sense and sensibility are more marshmallowy than Austen's—softening Lady B.'s selfishness, redeeming the Crawfords, transforming shallow Tom into a fit mate for Susan with implausible ease. But, while the more hard-headed Austen fans will probably prefer Jane Gillespie's 1983 Ladysmead (all about what happened to horrid Maria Bertram, an offstage player here), other Mansfield Parkers will find this an endearing, cozily amusing follow-up.
Pub Date: March 1, 1985
ISBN: 0575400242
Page Count: 193
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: April 12, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 1985
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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