SOURCE: "Leapin' Lizards!" in The New York Times Book Review, October 1, 1995, pp. 9-10.

In the following excerpt, Udovitch favorably assesses The Lost World as a thriller but ridicules Crichton for his allusions to what she terms contemporary "hot-button" issues.

The director James Cameron once observed that criticizing Jurassic Park (the movie, not the book) is like criticizing a roller coaster for not being Proust. Fans of Mr. Cameron's deft touch in such works as Aliens and both Terminator movies will recognize the grace with which he sidesteps the issue of a direct comparison between Jurassic Park (in this instance and hereafter, primarily the book, but the movie too) and À la Recherche du Temps Perdu. He is no doubt aware of the superficial similarities between the two. Both Michael Crichton and Proust take on the inherently problematic emotional imperative to recover elements of lost time. Both make liberal use...