Aiken's latest Austen-inspired work (Emma Watson, 1996, etc.) takes up the fate of the youngest Ward daughter from Mansfield Park. Young Hattie Ward is virtually besieged with vipers—by her uncaring father, her shrewish sister Agnes, and by the uncompromising Lady Ursula, who has taken up temporary residence in Bythorn Lodge. As punishment for accidentally breaking her sister's prized toiletries (while falling down the stairs), Hattie is sent to her uncle's home, where she receives slightly better treatment and where the Austen-like plot begins, peopled with both rascally and saintly types who throw Hattie's life into a genteel spin. The years pass tolerably at Uncle Philip and Aunt Polly's, with three boy cousins as company and the private mission of rehabilitating the twin girls (deemed mentally defective and kept isolated in the nursery). Hatty makes the acquaintance there of Lord Camber, a utopian idealist who takes an earnest interest in her poetry. Unfortunately, her Lord is sent off to America as an indentured servant (despite the dukedom he's to inherit) to build a "new community." Through a series of ill-fated circumstances, Hattie is sent packing again, this time as governess to Lady Drusilla (a musical savant, but unable to learn anything else) and the nasty Lady Barbara. She continues with her poetry and pines quietly for Lord Camber. Meanwhile, the specter of Lady Ursula haunts Hattie—for she's become her stepmother, and now her widowed stepmother, who's looking for a place to live, finding none, and getting a comeuppance for her years of sourness. When Hattie finally quits her position (klepto Lady Barbara's stolen some of Hattie's poems), she retreats to Lord Camber's cottage to await his return . . . . Fun yet slight fodder for Mansfield Park fans.
Pub Date: Dec. 1, 1998
ISBN: 0-312-19375-0
Page Count: 320
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1998
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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