Sharp, funny look at life and love in down-and-dirty New York.
Mary Bellanova’s good-for-nothing boyfriend Primo has been dead for hours . . . and she just thought he was watching TV.
That’s what she gets for loving an unemployed musician, even though she doesn’t really love him anymore. But Mary’s determined to get to the bottom of things, whether or not the “doughnutarian” cops who briefly camp out in her roach-infested apartment to investigate will help. She heads for the distant land of Flushing to talk to Primo’s wheelchair-bound mother, who’s a little too senile to remember much, then returns to the filthy streets of the East Village to track down his many former lovers and meet the wife Primo never bothered to mention: an ex-stripper turned foul-mouthed rock musician. Like most of these people, Mary is a loser herself and proud of it, living by dead-end temp jobs, hanging out in grungy bars, and opting for mostly meaningless sex until something better comes along. Eventually, she finds out that Primo was cheating on her—surprise, surprise—and, worst of all, lying about his age. Her slacker stud was well over 40, an unforgivable offense in this youthful but not innocent milieu, where anything goes and nothing much matters. Not only that, but he was dosing himself with enough Viagra to kill a Tijuana donkey. For all his vaunted edginess, author Nersesian (Manhattan Loverboy, not reviewed) offers a solidly constructed albeit slight plot that moves right along, and the members of his cast are carefully drawn. All the zany downtown types keep the action humming, although this cult novelist would rather be tough than trendy: there are no dot-com zillionaires or Park Avenue princesses slumming in his neighborhood.
Sharp, funny look at life and love in down-and-dirty New York.Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2000
ISBN: 0-671-77542-1
Page Count: 256
Publisher: MTV Books/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2000
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
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