Whew! Thank goodness those sexy scientists foiled the DNA-engineered dinosaurs in that totally misconceived Jurassic Park. Don't have to worry about any raptors round here. Yep, it's been six years, and Ian Malcolm, wisecracking mathematician (think Jeff Goldblum), can just get on with his chaos theory, tamely teaching his Santa Fe classes. CRUNCH.
With the thunder of a thousand T-rexes—or at least the weight of a 2-million first printing—Crichton's sequel to Jurassic Park invades bookstores this week. Action-packed and camera-ready, The Lost World is to its predecessor what microwave dinners are to home-cooked meals: hardly authentic, but in a pinch fully satisfying.
On an island in Costa Rica, the prehistoric creatures brought to life by the late, bankrupt company InGen are multiplying but dying young. There are far too many predators. And more are on the way: a murderous pack of humans intent on stealing dinosaur eggs for future genetic projects. Then a second team approaches, headed by Malcolm, that includes inventor Jack Thorne and biologist Sarah Harding. They are there to rescue Richard Levine, the paleontologist who wouldn't take Malcolm's advice to stay home. They get some crucial help from two precocious stowaways—Levine's seventh-grade lab helpers.
In this Lost World, the dinos make terrific parents. They'd do anything to protect their young. One of the book's more satisfying moments comes when a tyrannosaurus tenderly feeds a villain to its babies. Here the velociraptor stars of Jurassic Park hardly seem cause for alarm. More ominous are a pair of seven-foot chameleons that can take the shape of a plant, a tree—or a chain-link fence.
Such cinematic scenes make it difficult to read The Lost World without Spielbergian visions flashing through a reader's head. And the odd reappearance of Ian Malcolm, when other key characters from the original have been dropped, makes one wonder if only Jeff Goldblum was available to appear in the movie sequel. But even at his most calculating—incorporating two urchins, crafting a feminist hero—the author pleases. Characteristically clever, fast-paced and engaging, Michael Crichton's latest work accomplishes what he set out to do: offer the still-harrowing thrills of a by-now-familiar ride. (Knopf, $25.95)
by Robert T. Bakker
Michael Crichton may be a great storyteller, but even he wouldn't have the nerve to write a dinosaur novel told from the dino's point of view No such inhibitions plague Robert T. Bakker, which won't surprise the controversial paleontologist's colleagues at all. For more than a decade, Bakker, currently a curator at the Tate Museum in Casper, Wyo., has been roiling the world of paleontology with his outlandish theories about dinosaurs.
Bakker was among the earliest advocates of the idea that predatory dinosaurs weren't slow, sluggish or stupid, as generations of scientists had believed, but that they were cunning and crafty hunters. That once-outlandish idea is now firmly in the scientific mainstream.
Even when he turns out to be right, though, Bakker rubs other researchers the wrong way. He doesn't temper his statements with the proper scientific caveats, and he isn't shy about taking his ideas straight to the public, bypassing the usual stodgy technical journals in favor of popular books like The Dinosaur Heresies, published in 1986.
Now Bakker has struck again. Raptor Red is the story of an alluring young carnivorous dinosaur, who, widowed at an early age (her mate gets squashed by their dinner one day), wanders the landscape of Cretaceous North America looking for love and fulfillment.
Along the way, Bakker, who served as an unofficial technical advisor on Jurassic Park, makes sure the reader understands not only Red's lifestyle—there are deliciously horrifying descriptions of how dinosaurs devour their kills—but also about her behavior and motivation. Thus, readers get the answer to a question they probably wouldn't have thought to ask: What does it feel like to be a dinosaur?
Bakker doesn't really know what it feels like to be a dog, let alone an extinct raptor. But so what? This prehistoric soap opera, complete with sex, violence—and, yes, even love—works. Chalk up another victory for the Bad Boy of Paleontology. (Bantam, $21.95)
WENDELL MINOR: ART FOR THE WRITTEN WORD
Walk into a bookstore and see if you can feel it—that special buzz that books give off. Hold one in your hands and savor its design, its promise of transport. As Pat Conroy (Prince of Tides) puts it, "[Books] are as beautiful as fruit or jade or roses when they lie about the house." Certainly that's true of books with jackets drawn by Wendell Minor, 50, a Washington, Conn., artist who has produced more than 1,500 book jackets in 25 years. His style is clean and sumptuous, and his bold, surreal images invest books with an "instant-classic" appeal (which, as more than one author notes, is a considerable help in boosting sales).
This career retrospective includes some 100 color reproductions of Minor's dreamlike jackets for such books as Terms of Endearment, Truman and To Kill a Mockingbird, as well as glowing tributes from grateful authors like Fannie Flagg ("Next time, I think I'll have Wendell do the cover first, and then I'll write the book") and Conroy, who says, "I write for a thousand words, and then Wendell shows me what I mean in a single image." Surveying Minor's work, it's easy to see why writers are in awe of him: He's an artist in total command of his craft. (Harcourt Brace, $30)
by Tracy Thompson
The quickest way to stop using "I'm depressed" as a catchall emotion describing everything from a bad hair day to the aftermath of a fight with the kids is to read this absorbing account of one woman's lifelong battle with the beast of true clinical depression.
Thompson, a reporter for The Washington Post, draws on journals she has kept since she was a teenager in Atlanta to chronicle her condition in this evocative memoir. Subject to intense sadness and fits of uncontrollable weeping in school, Thompson considered suicide at 14. During the next few years, still struggling with depressive episodes and suffering from insomnia, she started taking Valium, sleeping pills and cough medicines laced with codeine. She was also abusing alcohol.
Recurring bouts of depression seem to have darkened every corner of her life. In 1990, Thompson landed in the psychiatric ward of Suburban Hospital in Bethesda, Md., effectively missing the biggest story on her beat: D.C. Mayor Marion Barry's indictment on cocaine-possession charges. Her boyfriend appears to be far too controlling to ultimately be of any good to her, but it takes a psychiatrist—she had tried therapy on and off—to make her see it (readers may cheer when she finally dumps the guy).
A dispassionate reporter, Thompson recounts the steps she took toward controlling this consumming disease—in her case the drug Prozac proved to be the best treatment—in this powerful story. It's a frightening tale that will strike a nerve in anyone whose life has been touched by the agony of mental illness. (Putnam, $23.95)
by Michael Daly
This first novel by New York Daily News columnist Michael Daly operates on two levels. Down in the "Hole," the New York City Transit Police's nickname for the city's vast and complex subway system, Under Ground is an engaging procedural in a little-known venue. Up on the street it is a tale of coming to grips with life's gray light.
In the mid-'80s officer Jack Swann and his fellows pursue "posses," packs of black teenagers who gather to rob "vies." They choose their prey by the size of their "prints"—the outline of the wallets in their pockets. The way the cynical transit cops make extra bucks is by a process called "trash for cash": Booking the thieves takes so many hours in New York City's choked justice system that they are assured of overtime pay.
When a teenager is killed while struggling with Swann for his police revolver (wounding the officer in the process), the novel moves to a higher literary plane. After his near-death experience, Swann challenges the assumptions of his circumscribed life. The dowdy, overweight son of a cop goes on a diet and steps out as a one-man subway crime-stopper in plain clothes. Borrowing $10,000, Swann starts wearing Brooks Brothers suits and Homberg hats into the Hole.
But his grandiose attempts to escape reality eventually fail. Swann's police-department bosses wonder where the money is coming from, and his wife, Ellen, boots him out after she discovers his affair with the beautiful Danica, a family friend. Swann's way, in—and out—of the subterranean world, makes for a riveting ride, and Daly's well-crafted conclusion will carry readers a stop or two past their destination. (Little, Brown, $21.95)
- Contributors:
- Susan Toepfer,
- Michael Lemonick,
- Alex Tresniowski,
- Elaine Kahn,
- J.D. Reed.
Saved by the Bell Reunion
The hookups, the meltdowns, the memoires
The case reveals what was really going on what they think of each other now!
