Jurassic Park

When I first saw Jurassic Park in the cinema in 1993, it sparked an obsession that lasted for over a decade. Looking back I'm not sure whether my obsession was with Jurassic Park or dinosaurs in general, but it was all the same to me.

Almost as soon as we left the cinema, I begged my mother to buy me Michael Crichton's novel, even though it was clearly not written for eleven-year-olds, and I recall reading it through from cover to cover at least three or four times. I even remember being called on during an English class library session to read aloud to the class when I just happened to be in the middle of a very grisly death scene. The teacher quickly cut me off—”Thank you, that's enough,”—though I don't remember getting in trouble.

While my Jurassic Park obsession was eventually replaced by a theater obsession, and then several other obsessions since, this adventure 65 million years in the making has always held a special place in my heart, and it came into my life during such a developmental stage that I think it has been woven into my DNA ever since.

And so, when I was stuck for something to read, I fished out that very same copy that my mother bought me in 1993—the cover creased and tattered and taped together, and at some point preserved in clear contact covering—and gave it a possibly fifth read through.

The wide-eyed, dinosaur-loving kid inside of me was reawakened, and I tore through this novel with delight and awe, and at the same time, my adult brain was astounded at how much I'd forgotten or been too young to fully appreciate.

Back then I was a voracious reader, and even in elementary school, I had gotten bored of the novels for my age group and had started pilfering books from my mother's bookcase, or searching the grown-up sections of the library. While I read and understood Jurassic Park at the time, I don't think I was able to absorb the full richness of it that I could as an adult. Or comprehend some of its flaws.

As a kid and young adult, this was as close to a perfect novel as I'd ever read, and honestly, after this re-read, I feel much the same way. It does exactly what it says on the tin, and does it well. It is thrilling, thoughtful, and terrifying. But as a weary adult, I can also acknowledge some of the places where It falls short for me now.

Ellie was much more of a background character than I remember, and then there's the ol' kid character chestnut, both of which I was a little disappointed by.

Ellie was written as an intelligent, confident, athletic woman, who was cool, calm, and collected. She's often objectified by the men around her and has an action hero moment towards the end of the novel where she gets to shine. But it left me wanting more, and the frequent commentary on her thighs and short shorts had me wondering if it was a case of commenting on sexism or just actual sexism itself. I'm willing to give Crichton the benefit of the doubt here because between Ellie and Dr. Bobbie Carter, we at least got two smart women to break up the sausage party.

I loved the kids in the movie, and I remember loving the kids in the novel too, but in this re-read, Lex was incredibly irritating and one-note. I did laugh a few times at her precocious quips, and I appreciated that she bucked stereotypes for the time with her interest in baseball, but the problem was that she was pretty one-note for the rest of the novel. She has one freak-out early on, but from then on she seems to have nerves of steel to an absurd degree, and her precociousness becomes a liability. I mean, I don't have siblings or kids and to be honest I'm kind of scared of them, so I don't know if she's realistically written. I just didn't enjoy her much this time around.

I really liked Tim though, I thought he was pretty well written, and I can definitely understand why he was my favorite character as a kid. I would have related to him quite a lot.

Something that also stuck out to me in this re-read was the unnecessarily comical descriptions of how fat and disgusting Nedry was, which I found pretty heavy-handed and distasteful. The whole “fat is bad” trope was at odds with the rest of the writing and felt like it was implanted from another less sophisticated book, and I would have expected better from Crichton.

Except for a last-minute exploration sequence right at the end of the novel that felt awkward, unnecessary, and tacked-on, the rest of the novel is horror-adventure gold! I remember as a kid I had blind and unerring love for the movie, but also a whistful what-might-have been wonder about what it could have been if more of the set pieces from the novel had made their way into the movie, particularly the river scene and the aviary scene. Many of these were lifted and reworked for other movies in the series (which probably explains why I loved Jurassic Park III so much when it seems I was in the minority a bit lol).

I'm so happy that I picked Jurassic Park up again as an adult, because it brought back some of that childhood joy and excitement, and not only that, it was even better than I remembered it.

If you're looking for a thrilling adventure with some geeky science-y musings thrown in, then Jurassic Park provides and more than satisfies. I treasured it as a child, and now as an adult, I will treasure it anew with a deeper, more nuanced appreciation.