Bad news indeed: unconvincing and instantly forgettable.
The Washington newsman’s 16th novel portrays the misadventures of a “straight and dull clothing salesman” who fabricates a new life that he can’t fit comfortably into.
Middle-aged Hugo Marder, a suit salesman at upscale Washington, D.C., store Nash Brothers, impulsively purchases on eBay a Silver Star awarded for heroism to a Vietnam veteran. Wearing its lapel pin in public, he’s immediately congratulated and admired by one and all—and, to his gratified surprise, Hugo’s “childhood dream” of becoming a Marine appears to be coming true (though false). Barely surviving a challenging conversation with a real Marine in a Thai restaurant (where some quick thinking on Hugo’s part defuses a potentially violent situation), he allows himself to believe he may actually be a hero. He exercises, loses weight, shaves his head and struts convincingly. Attending a “Semper Fidelis seminar” at the Smithsonian, he commands praise from luminaries like Art Buchwald and Mark Russell. Then, reporting for jury duty, Hugo encounters his hardnosed ex-wife Emily, a political secretary with urgent ambitions. She seems about to unmask him, until a threatened courtroom shootout inspires Hugo to act in a manner consistent with his newly created image. The D.C. Medal of Honor is presented to him (along with Emily’s rekindled sexual attention), and—lo and behold—Conscience appears. Requesting and receiving a transfer to Nash Brothers’ Dallas branch, Hugo finds more challenges, and eventually resolves to Make Things Right. But the culture (and, more particularly, the media) needs heroes—and he’s left to live unhappily and guiltily ever after. If the irony that attends this novel’s dénouement had been anywhere present in the slack, name-dropping, meandering pages leading up to it, the story might have managed a semblance of credibility. No such luck.
Bad news indeed: unconvincing and instantly forgettable.Pub Date: Nov. 14, 2006
ISBN: 1-4000-6486-4
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 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
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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