This dense, crowded, intricately constructed novel—a fictional history of the Caribbean underclass in the century-and-a- half since the abolition of slavery—won for Martinique's Chamoiseau the prestigious Goncourt Prize in 1993. The many-leveled story moves backward and forward in time, comprising the narrative of radical activist Marie-Sophie Laborieux, as improved and edited by the ``Haitian man of letters'' (one of her several mentors) Ti-Cirique, and presented by its ostensible author Oiseau de Cham—and these are not the only complications. Straightforward history (the rise and collapse of the plantation system, the coming of the oil companies, a formal state visit by de Gaulle in the '60s) is interwoven with fragments of Creole legend and folk wisdom, and, centrally, with the story of Marie-Sophie's itinerant father Esternone (including his many amours), and Marie-Sophie's own subsequent determination to emulate his love of liberty (he was a freed slave), climaxing with her establishment of a shantytown village to house the displaced Creoles of Martinique and with her battles in search of more humane treatment of her people. It's a colorful and exciting patchwork, filled with the sights, sounds, and smells of its exotic locale and peopled by what seems an inexhaustible profusion of vividly eccentric figures, the most arresting including Esternone's beloved Ninon (who's carried away by a water siren), Marie-Sophie's lugubrious employer (and admirer) Monsieur Alcibiade, and the poet- politician AimÇ Cesaire, a real historical figure portrayed here as a complex mixture of socialist firebrand and crafty compromiser. Chamoiseau's high-energy prose brilliantly renders all the relevant permutations and particulars of class conflict and frequently produces such incidental delights as his wonderful description of one of Esternone's epical sexual encounters (``On the so-sweet crest of pleasure, he wished to scream sigh cry breathe die''). We're informed that another Chamoiseau title, Solibo Magnifique, is forthcoming in English translation. Godspeed.
Pub Date: Feb. 28, 1997
ISBN: 0-679-43235-3
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Pantheon
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1997
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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