François’ apologia is less a sour-grapes critique of his brother’s theories than a cynical deconstruction of the...
Audeguy’s inventive novel profiles the older, smarter brother of the French philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau.
Witnessing the 1794 relocation of his younger brother’s remains to the Panthéon, the aging François Rousseau resolves to write his own memoir as a counterweight to Jean-Jacques’ Confessions. This episodic novel, Audeguy’s second (The Theory of Clouds, 2007), chronicles François’ 90-year lifespan, beginning with his rejection by the father who coddled his younger brother, his mentorship in literature and licentiousness by the Comte de Saint-Fonds, his apprenticeship to a watchmaker, his further training in debauchery (his chosen métier) and his arrival in Paris to become the factotum of a genteel bordello. His watchmaking skills land him a lucrative job manufacturing erotic accessories, including a sex machine dubbed Hercules. François does time in the Bastille—contrary to Revolutionary propaganda, he insists, it was the cushiest prison in Paris. There, he meets the Marquis de Sade and helps Sade hide the manuscript of the Marquis’ notorious The 120 days of Sodom. Released during the storming of the Bastille, the now aged François has outlived his retirement funds. As the Terror approaches, he’s employed by embattled feminist Sophie to manage a Paris public bath. The fact that François and Jean-Jacques never met as adults is historically correct (Audeguy’s title is taken from Rousseau’s assertion in Confessions that after his older brother disappeared, he became the fils unique: only son.) But dramatic tension might have been better served had the liberties allowed by historical fiction been exploited to stage a confrontation between these two unequally treated siblings. However, Audeguy’s primary objective is a prolonged meditation, through the eyes of a perversely virtuous protagonist, on the limitless permutations of human depravity and hypocrisy. The French critics have praised the novel’s 18th-century-esque diction. Cullen’s English translation expertly delivers the equivalent.
François’ apologia is less a sour-grapes critique of his brother’s theories than a cynical deconstruction of the revolutionary ideals they presaged.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2008
ISBN: 978-0-15-101329-6
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2008
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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