Brisk and (generally) unsentimental stories of New England rural life, by an emerging New Hampshire writer whose flinty wit may remind readers of Maine's Carolyn Chute or Vermont's E. Annie Proulx. Of the 19 tales gathered here, several have previously appeared in Rule's Wood Heat (1992, not reviewed). Her narrative situations tend toward monotonyunappreciated housewives, selfish and inconsiderate husbands, ignored and inquisitive kids predominatebut a real unity is gained by her fierce concentration on people who lead stunted, unfulfilled lives and know in their bones they were meant for something better. The collection begins impressively, with an inventive image of down-eastern sheer cussedness at a contentious school-district meeting (``Yankee Curse'') and the tangy title story, in which an embattled woman finds surcease from a lingering illness in adapting her newfound skills as a potter to contemplate voodoo against a self-righteous neighbor. If too many of the subsequent pieces focus on daughters fishing with their fathers, or deprived spouses confronting their overgrown-boy husbands, Rule nevertheless manages several almost- total successes. There's a charming example of her feel for the tensions between stubborn townsfolk and naive newcomers in ``The Widow and the Trapper,'' effectively varied portrayals of the psyches of lonely and misunderstood women in ``Etta Walks'' and ``Ada among the Dogs,'' and a deeply moving, richly metaphoric study of a well-meaning failure in the volume's best story, ``The Fisher Cat.'' Rule knows her fishing, farming, and trapping details and can raise a reader's eyebrows with salty dialogue (``She's not a witch....She's a baptist'') and vigorous imagery (when a Little League base-runner is incorrectly called out, Rule writes, ``They'll have to pry him off this base like a bloodsucker from a swimmer's calf''). This strong book is a bit like a New England barn: rough- edged, with unaccountable gaps and overhangs and nails hammered into places where they're not needed. But it does the job, and looks built to last.
Pub Date: Sept. 15, 1995
ISBN: 0-87451-702-8
Page Count: 208
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1995
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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