Half Hollywood horror story, half dippy relationship saga: about two thirds of a good book.
Pseudo-epistolary novel that veers madly from dull to insightful to some competent middle-ground: a collaboration between TV writer/humorist Markoe and ex-Wall of Voodoo member Prieboy.
Assuming this is loosely autobiographical, the Markoe (It’s My F***ing Birthday, 2002, etc.) stand-in is Lisa, a lonely writer who spends her days locked in a windowless room with a bunch of pasty, chubby, socially challenged men as they bang out scripts for a mediocre sitcom. Prieboy’s alter ego is Grant, a once well-known ’80s rocker whose career slump has picked up recently with the buzzy success of his new play, Tommy! (Lee!): The Musical (Prieboy, not coincidentally, wrote a musical called White Trash Wins Lotto). After the two briefly chat following a performance of the show, they exchange e-mails and their respective creative output (Lisa’s books, Grant’s music). Their e-meet-cute develops into a virtual friendship through their invention of the titular game, in which they exchange true stories of pain each suffered at the hands of a respective former boy/girlfriend and award points based on levels of humiliation achieved. For Lisa, this is a desperate lifeline, pretty much the only thing that keeps her going. Grant, while engaged in the game, is doing it more for entertainment’s sake (at first, anyhow), encouraged by his scenemaker girlfriend Winnie. She’s mostly interested in hearing Lisa’s stories about her ex, who just happens to be a megalomaniacal filmmaker currently interested in buying the rights to Grant’s musical. Grant’s segments are engaging, in an LA-insider sort of way, limning the delicate power plays and phantom gossip that make up the daily life of the city’s creative community. If only the tale hadn’t kept shifting back to Lisa, a dull creation as manipulative as she is spineless, who evokes some slight sympathy from the reader only because she’s not malicious like Winnie.
Half Hollywood horror story, half dippy relationship saga: about two thirds of a good book.Pub Date: June 29, 2004
ISBN: 1-4000-6076-1
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Villard
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2004
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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