It's not surprising, perhaps, that Updike—a dazzling critic as well as an assured, gifted story-writer—proves to be the most satisfying guest-editor of the "Best American Short Stories" series so far. True, as with other celebrity-anthologizers (Joyce Carol Oates, John Gardner, etc.), one can see an idiosyncratic sensibility at work in some of the choices here. But, in Updike's case, personal taste never leads to the inclusion of second-rate, graceless work. Jeanne Schinto's "Caddies' Day" is a fine reflection of Updike's interest in the country-club world; his passion for everyday technical detail can be seen in Stephen Kirk's "Morrison's Reactions" (dentistry) and Lawry Pei's "The Cold Room" (animal-research labs); and an Updike-ian sense of subtle family-situation comes through in mother-oriented stories by Paul Bowles and Rick DeMarinis—while Donald Justice's "The Artificial Moonlight" echoes Updike's nostalgia with its feel for bygone sociability. Even more impressive, however, are the many standout stories here which have no particular link to Updike's particular world or style: Dianne Benedict's grotesque, moving study of a sick couple's impossible leave-taking; Mary Hood's wonderfully voiced account of a depressed southern matron's last days; good-ol'-boys comedy from Madison Smartt Bell, the dense eloquence of Lee K. Abbott (like boiled-down Walker Percy), a Botswana story from Norma Rush—plus first-class work by James Salter (the knowing, sneakily graceful "Foreign Shores"), Andre Dubus (the passionately Catholic "A Father's Story"), and Mavis Gallant (the distinguished, faultless "Lena"). And, like this year's O. Henry story-collection, Updike's shrewd, professional gathering is topped by a classic that's sure to appear in anthologies for decades to come: Cynthia Ozick's scouring projection of the path of Jewish history toward Miami Beach—"Rosa.
Pub Date: Oct. 15, 1984
ISBN: 0395354137
Page Count: 330
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
Review Posted Online: Oct. 6, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 1984
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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