Wing, no stranger to clunky phrasing (Stacey and her housekeeper sit “reasonably companionably”), nevertheless has good fun...
An effective, if not wholly original first novel, about the shark-infested waters of Hollywood—and that would be mostly lady sharks.
It’s the end of 2001 and nice girl Stacey is preparing for Mayor Rudy Giuliani’s staff farewell party. What begins as a celebratory evening ends with a bombshell: the conglomerate her fiancé works for has acquired a movie company and they’re moving to Los Angeles. It shouldn’t be too bad—a house in Beverly Hills, year-round sunshine, a happy husband—but for this independent New York girl, all she can imagine is the worst, and as luck would have it, that’s what she gets. The main obstacle between Stacey and happiness is Julia and Simon Mallis, the old owners of Pacificus. Kept on as consultants until the end of the next year, they begin waging war at Jamey and Stacey’s New York wedding (they rearrange the seating cards and take over as the entertainment). With Sun Tzu’s The Art of War in hand, Simon intends to have it all—cash from the company’s buyout and a hands-on role in its running. Unfortunately the battle moves to the home front and Stacey is the sole combatant. Wing skewers the absurdities of Hollywood life, and there is an abundance of raw material: charity benefits for odd diseases (helping excessively sweaty children is the cause du jour), daily color consultations (one wouldn’t want to show up at the Polo Lounge in chartreuse when clearly it’s a magenta day) and the oh-so-necessary study of Kabbalah. Stacey’s new social circle of Hollywood wives live a sad, parasitic life; their sole source of accomplishment is in one-upping each other in designer goods and plastic surgery. When Jamey and Stacey discover their house has been bugged, Stacey hatches a plan that will finally rid them of the comically malevolent Simon and Julia.
Wing, no stranger to clunky phrasing (Stacey and her housekeeper sit “reasonably companionably”), nevertheless has good fun with the wackiness of Hollywood lives.Pub Date: Nov. 18, 2008
ISBN: 978-0-06-156824-4
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2008
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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