Robinson's seventh book is a New Hollywood sequel to Perdido (1978) in which the follies of the older generation continue to provide the best dirt. Recalled from London to L.A. by the drive-by shooting of her best friend, journalist Kate Alder Stone, Alexandra Zachary, normally happy heading her independent production company abroad, can't help chafing under the news that Victor Levanin International (VLI), the studio her great-grandfather founded and his heirs grandly squandered, is once again on the block. Alex's need to share the news of Kate's death with her lifelong love, Oscared leading man King Ryder, has already put him back in her Rolodex again. Also back in her life, if not between her sheets, is her despicable ex Rick Stone, powerful head of rival studio SMS, the man she married on the rebound from King's marriage, and the one who left her with a precocious daughter but not a single good memory. When Rick confirms the rumor that he's the leading suitor for VLI, Alex grows determined to outbid his billion- dollar offer, even though it means going hat in hand to her remote parents, her buddies in the business, and her actress friend Polo Montana's husband Baron Solder Task, the German Ted Turner. But how can Alex ever raise all that money in time to beat Rick when there are so many limos to take, so many childhood traumas to recall, so many pithy apothegms about Old Hollywood to recycle (``You knew if you had presence by five. By seven you were on to your best angles. . . .''), so many names to drop with a clatter (``You had an amazing childhood; you met the Kennedys, Paul Newman, Toni Morrison, Martin Luther King, danced with Gene Kelly. . . . You've been in the greatest private projection rooms in the world'')? Kate's death, by the way, will turn out to be no casual accident, unlike almost everything else in this gaspingly star- struck dinosaur, whose DNA seems to have been preserved in amber ever since the studio era.
Pub Date: Aug. 1, 1996
ISBN: 0-449-90861-5
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 1996
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
Soft-focus story moves right along with few surprises. This time around, Hannah avoids the soap-opera complications of her...
Another middle-aged mom in a muddle.
After years of false starts and big hopes, Elizabeth’s ruggedly handsome husband Jack, a former football star, just landed a spot as a sportscaster on national news. He still loves her, even though much younger women are giving him come-hither looks. Heck, he doesn’t want to betray the love of his life after she helped him kick drugs and stuck by him even when he was a struggling has-been. And won’t it seem hypocritical if he fools around with his sexy assistant while he does in-depth reporting on a rape case involving a famous basketball center? Well, he fools around anyway. Elizabeth, nicknamed Birdie, knows nothing of this, but she withdraws from Jack when her hard-drinking, salt-of-the-earth father has a stroke and dies. Now no one will call her “sugar beet” ever again. Time to return home to Tennessee and contend with Anita, the sort-of-evil stepmother so trashy she wears pink puffy slippers all day long. Naturally, it turns out that Anita actually has a heart of gold and knows a few things about Birdie’s dead mother that were hushed up for years. Mom was an artist, just like Birdie, and an old scandal comes to light as Anita unrolls a vibrant canvas that portrays her secret lover. Perhaps, Birdie muses, her mother died of heartbreak, never having followed her true love or developed her talent. Has she, too, compromised everything she holds dear? Hoping to find out, Birdie joins a support group that promises to reconnect confused women with their passion. She and Jack separate, prompting a how-dare-you fit from their grown daughters. Will Birdie fly her empty nest? Will she go back to college for a degree in art? Will her brooding watercolors ever sell?
Soft-focus story moves right along with few surprises. This time around, Hannah avoids the soap-opera complications of her previous tales (Summer Island, 2001, etc.).Pub Date: July 1, 2002
ISBN: 0-345-45071-X
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2002
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