Enormous fun, and arguably the author’s best since the sublime Modern Baptists.
Do-gooders and bigots, the ethically conflicted and the sexually disadvantaged, ecologists and evangelicals pair up, disentangle, rant and fret in Wilcox’s fractious ninth novel.
Citizens of fictional Tula Springs, La., the site of such formidably funny predecessors as Modern Baptists (1983) and Miss Undine’s Living Room (2001), cluster around protagonist Burma Van Buren, widowed, passing 60 and hell-bent on supporting numerous liberal causes abominated by her bone-deep conservative neighbors. Burma’s rich, you see, thanks to the fortune left by her octogenarian spouse, a prosperous catfish farmer and big-time lottery winner. But commercial schemes aimed at turning Burma’s rundown-lavish domicile “Graceland II” into a mockery of her charitable ideals involve and divide the novel’s other characters. These include Burma’s drop-dead gorgeous (and duplicitous) accountant Travis Harper, her equally attractive landscape designer Hunter Schine (who’s gay, but what the hell) and the man she loved and lost, town official Mr. Pickens, likely to be impeached from his sinecure as Superintendent of Streets, Parks and Sewers. The (not exactly) gentler sex are loudly represented by Burma’s adversarial attorney Donna Lee Keely, and her gun-toting 80-something mama, who has her eye on a judge about to be widowed. Everybody minds everybody else’s business with Sisyphean persistence and Machiavellian cunning, and peaks of hilarity crop up like unruly springy hairdos (e.g., when Burma chats amiably with a socially conscious housebreaker who does volunteer work when he isn’t cat-burgling). Wilcox moves from one character’s misbehavior to another’s with the agility of a Southern-fried P.G. Wodehouse. The inordinately busy plot eventually runs out of steam, but then Wilcox whomps us upside the head with a blissfully deranged climactic courtroom scene.
Enormous fun, and arguably the author’s best since the sublime Modern Baptists.Pub Date: April 7, 2007
ISBN: 978-0-670-03152-8
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2007
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
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