Word: novels
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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While it is setting up such questions, the film-based on H.G. Wells' novel -gives promise of being a fairly gripping fantasy-adventure. But it answers all the questions too soon and then has nowhere to go. Moreau turns out to be a mad visionary who, having partially cracked the genetic code, is trying to breed animals into human beings. The servants are some of his handiwork. As for those creatures in the jungle, they represent Moreau's near misses - brut ish humanoids who cannot transcend their origins as bears, lions, hyenas...
With the publication of A Division of the Spoils in 1975, English Author Paul Scott completed The Raj Quartet -a four-novel, 2,000-page saga set in India during the sunset of British rule. To the regret of Scott's many devotees, that seemed to be that: the last of the white sahibs and memsahibs taking their bows in a long, engrossing valedictory. Not quite. Staying On offers another look at a locale familiar to readers of The Raj Quartet. This new novel is less a sequel than a graceful comic coda to the earlier song of India...
Rippling Comedy. In the early stages of the novel, Scott plays the antics of his couple and their anomalous place in Indian society for laughs. The only threat to their continued self-imposed exile also seems comic. Mrs. Bhoolabhoy, the fat and temperamental hotel owner, is trying to evict the Smalleys so that she can raze the old building. With the timid and ineffectual...
Circles depicts more accurately than any male-authored Washington novel the social life by which politicians, journalists, lobbyists and bureaucrats converge in ways that profoundly affect the country's political course. In McCarthy's Washington, the women rarely manipulate men to influence policy; nor are they exploited by men to further masculine political careers. Mostly these women offer soothing sensitivities that allow ideas and personalities to merge across dinner tables with a minimum of friction. Sure, it's all a game, concedes Laura Talbert, a veteran hostess and one of McCarthy's leading characters...
Unnamed People. Under McCarthy's handling these woes do not turn into soap opera. She is a sharp and lucid observer. But she is so detached and dignified that the novel lacks fire. Her gentility dulls the effectiveness of a potentially enlivening technique: the difficult one of mixing real Washington characters with fictional ones. Such household names as Ed Muskie, Hubert Humphrey, Henry Jackson, Lady Bird Johnson, Judy Agnew, Betty Ford Rosalynn Carter- and Gene McCarthy -move fleetingly through the story. All are portrayed in flattering terms...