Although lacking Bruce Wagner’s rapier bons mots and mordant sarcasm, a pleasant slow roast of Hollywood’s studied inanity,...
Reality-TV packager’s crisis of conscience drives murder plot in a comic’s debut novel.
Trent, newly promoted VP of Nova, which hawks reality-show concepts to the networks and cable, got where he is by never underestimating viewers’ hunger for programs like Pregnant Hookers and Extreme Animal Lovers (a show about bestiality). So when Stewart Dyson, his boss P.T. Beauregard’s Vietnam comrade-in-arms and archrival, tries to recruit Trent to help reform Reality’s venality, he’s all ears. P.T., who has taken telegenic sleaze to the level of Sun Tzu’s Art of War, gloats over Dyson’s sudden, suspicious death, which happened while Dyson phoned Trent to warn him that his own life was in danger. Dyson’s plan to seed the market with socially responsible programs, in which he’d enlisted Trent’s surreptitious complicity, is scuttled. P.T. is now hell-bent on removing the final barrier to Nova’s hijacking of the airwaves, censorious FCC Chairman Ronald Armsburger. Trent is convinced that his volatile boss’s shadowy past conceals mob ties, so he enlists coworkers Max and Rachel to help thwart what he is certain is a planned hit on Armsburger during the latter’s L.A. visit. Max and Rachel, Trent’s bombastic lover, are also in on Trent’s last-ditch ploy to save American minds from further erosion by soulless reality shows: He’s going to kill P.T., take over Nova and launch his pet project, Samaritans, a kind of Pay It Forward with no payday. The fact that American minds aren’t exactly clamoring for more gravitas in their entertainment is lost on Trent, even as his best friend, Adam, finally succeeds in gainfully selling out with a screenplay chockablock with gratuitous violence and ersatz gangsta-speak. Although it stretches credulity that Trent would harbor such illusions without a background in public television, or that he’s desperate enough to murder, the final twist is a thoroughly credible surprise.
Although lacking Bruce Wagner’s rapier bons mots and mordant sarcasm, a pleasant slow roast of Hollywood’s studied inanity, complete with laugh-out-loud reality-show pitches.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-89733-548-1
Page Count: 270
Publisher: Academy Chicago
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2006
A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.
Pub Date: July 11, 1960
ISBN: 0060935464
Page Count: 323
Publisher: Lippincott
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with...
Talk-show queen takes tumble as millions jeer.
Nora Bridges is a wildly popular radio spokesperson for family-first virtues, but her loyal listeners don't know that she walked out on her husband and teenaged daughters years ago and didn't look back. Now that a former lover has sold racy pix of naked Nora and horny himself to a national tabloid, her estranged daughter Ruby, an unsuccessful stand-up comic in Los Angeles, has been approached to pen a tell-all. Greedy for the fat fee she's been promised, Ruby agrees and heads for the San Juan Islands, eager to get reacquainted with the mom she plans to betray. Once in the family homestead, nasty Ruby alternately sulks and glares at her mother, who is temporarily wheelchair-bound as a result of a post-scandal car crash. Uncaring, Ruby begins writing her side of the story when she's not strolling on the beach with former sweetheart Dean Sloan, the son of wealthy socialites who basically ignored him and his gay brother Eric. Eric, now dying of cancer and also in a wheelchair, has returned to the island. This dismal threesome catch up on old times, recalling their childhood idylls on the island. After Ruby's perfect big sister Caroline shows up, there's another round of heartfelt talk. Nora gradually reveals the truth about her unloving husband and her late father's alcoholism, which led her to seek the approval of others at the cost of her own peace of mind. And so on. Ruby is aghast to discover that she doesn't know everything after all, but Dean offers her subdued comfort. Happy endings await almost everyone—except for readers of this nobly preachy snifflefest.
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with syrupy platitudes about life and love.Pub Date: March 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-609-60737-5
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2001
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