An object lesson in how not to write fiction.
A tale of three young women making their way through the perils of Hollywood.
Lynsey Dixon is answering phones at a London talent agency when her career takes a turn for the fabulous. Her new gig is in LA, where she will be the personal assistant to Melanie Chaplin, a talented British actress who’s set to star on a hot TV series. Seeing America by bus en route to California, Lynsey meets toothsome runaway Serena Simon, also on her way to la-la-land, where she hopes to turn her drop-dead looks into stardom. Driven by their dreams, enveloped by the amoral Hollywood ethos, and subject to shocking reversals, Lynsey, Serena, and Melanie soon discover that fame isn’t quite what they expected. (Imagine the shock.) Misleadingly marketed as chick-lit, Bond’s first is soap-operatic rather than effervescent, earnest instead of cheeky; it’s miles from Helen Fielding or Sophie Kinsella, closer in spirit to the work of E. Lynn Harris and Jackie Collins. Unfortunately, it lacks Harris’s sass and Collins’s outré ostentation, though Bond certainly shares their tendency to tell instead of show. Clearly, she knows her characters—their childhood traumas, their romantic weaknesses, their secret insecurities—but rather than creating circumstances that allow them to reveal themselves through words and actions, she lays bare their inner lives in chunks of exposition. Myriad plot twists and turns may keep readers wondering what happens next, but that’s about all they’ll wonder. Given the author’s bona fides as a show-business insider (she worked in the film industry for seven years), the lack of juicy dish and exclusive insights is particularly disappointing. Indeed, Bond occasionally seems bizarrely misinformed. Are we expected to believe that a woman nominated for a best-actress Oscar has to pay for her own awards-ceremony outfit?
An object lesson in how not to write fiction.Pub Date: April 5, 2005
ISBN: 0-451-21461-7
Page Count: 352
Publisher: NAL/Berkley
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2005
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.
Sisters work together to solve a child-abandonment case.
Ellie and Julia Cates have never been close. Julia is shy and brainy; Ellie gets by on charm and looks. Their differences must be tossed aside when a traumatized young girl wanders in from the forest into their hometown in Washington. The sisters’ professional skills are put to the test. Julia is a world-renowned child psychologist who has lost her edge. She is reeling from a case that went publicly sour. Though she was cleared of all wrongdoing, Julia’s name was tarnished, forcing her to shutter her Beverly Hills practice. Ellie Barton is the local police chief in Rain Valley, who’s never faced a tougher case. This is her chance to prove she is more than just a fading homecoming queen, but a scarcity of clues and a reluctant victim make locating the girl’s parents nearly impossible. Ellie places an SOS call to her sister; she needs an expert to rehabilitate this wild-child who has been living outside of civilization for years. Confronted with her professional demons, Julia once again has the opportunity to display her talents and salvage her reputation. Hannah (The Things We Do for Love, 2004, etc.) is at her best when writing from the girl’s perspective. The feral wolf-child keeps the reader interested long after the other, transparent characters have grown tiresome. Hannah’s torturously over-written romance passages are stale, but there are surprises in store as the sisters set about unearthing Alice’s past and creating a home for her.
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.Pub Date: March 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-345-46752-3
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2005
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
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
bookshelf
