A philosophical story about fears to which no beating heart is immune.
Bright lights in a big city herald the return of the dead in Swedish horrorist Lindqvist’s second novel, after Let the Right One In (2007), a vampire tale that was later turned into a movie.
This time the author replaces vampires with zombies, a switch that effectively accents his expressive, unnerving writing. In the process he offers a unique and humanistic take on the undead that has a place alongside thoughtful horror novels like World War Z. The story begins in Stockholm with a subtle natural phenomenon. The country, deep in its winter twilight, experiences a collective headache that threatens to drive its sufferers mad. Next, the city is struck by a massive short circuit, a reverse blackout that powers up every appliance. Then Lindqvist introduces his cast: David, a stand-up comedian and loving husband; Mahler, a suicidal journalist who mourns the untimely death of his grandson Elias; and Elvy and her granddaughter Flora, quietly acknowledging the new telepathy that has emerged between them. When the dead do come back, the book delivers believable terror. The most disquieting scenes come early. David rushes to the hospital, where his beloved wife Eva has died in a car accident. As he cries with despair, his wife suddenly grasps his hand, opens one gruesome dead eye and croaks his name. Anyone who can drop off to sleep after this passage has nerves of steel. After photographing a newly reanimated morgue, Mahler rushes to his grandson’s grave, where he disinters the child’s body and carries the desiccated corpse home to bathe it. What’s interesting about what follows is the way that it’s handled—not with Romero-esque sarcasm and blood-spattering gunplay, but with sincere reflection on what would happen if the dead arose. How would the government respond? What does it mean to be human if death is not the end? And perhaps most importantly, how would we feel if those we loved and lost were suddenly returned to us?
A philosophical story about fears to which no beating heart is immune.Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-312-60525-4
Page Count: 384
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: July 2, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2010
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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