by Jennifer Weiner ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 3, 2012
Spares no bon mot in exposing Hollywood’s sexism, ageism and incurable penchant for extravagant silliness.
A sitcom showrunner finds the road to her first series launch much rockier than expected.
When Ruth Saunders gets “the call” from the network telling her that her original series, The Next Best Thing, is a go, at first she is incredulous. Although she’s served her time in a writers’ room, she never expected to sell her autobiographical concept about a young woman, Daphne, and her grandmother, Nanna Trudy, who move to Miami to seek their fortunes. Ruth moved to Hollywood with her grandmother, Rae, and they’ve both enjoyed success, Ruth as a comedy writer and Rae as an extra. Rae raised Ruth from toddlerhood after a car crash killed her parents and disfigured Ruth. (Even after multiple surgeries, one side of Ruth’s face is badly scarred.) After Ruth is hired as an assistant to two writer-producers, Big Dave and Little Dave, they help her develop and pitch her own show. The process of bringing the series to air is sardonically chronicled by Weiner, herself a TV veteran. Ruth’s hopes for Next are systematically dashed. The network suits insist on a terrible rewrite of a critical scene, and now Nanna has morphed from Golden Girls ditzy sophisticate to randy, superannuated cougar. (So shocked is Rae by her raunchy doppelganger, that her relationship with her granddaughter is sorely tested for the first time.) The zaftig leading lady (Daphne is insecure about her weight) shrinks down to a wraith of bulimic proportions, while shilling for a new diet. The seasoned character actress playing Nanna is replaced because the suits want a name, and the bimbo who caused Ruth’s departure from her last writing gig is hired as Daphne’s sidekick. Worse, Ruth has, for once, gotten what she wished for in the romance department—her first requited love, yet she pushes Little Dave away. The plot, exposition and flashback, heavy at first, pick up speed as complications multiply.
Spares no bon mot in exposing Hollywood’s sexism, ageism and incurable penchant for extravagant silliness.Pub Date: July 3, 2012
ISBN: 978-1-4516-1775-7
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: June 30, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2012
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PROFILES
by J.D. Salinger ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 15, 1951
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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SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
APPRECIATIONS
by Kristin Hannah ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 1, 2006
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
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