Sweeping love story of Marilyn Monroe's long-standing affairs with Senator, then President, Kennedy and brother Bobby. That Marilyn and JFK might someday be worthy of the high treatment given by Wild Bill Shakespeare to Antony and Cleopatra remains a teaser for playwrights and novelists. But in his latest (already slated for filming as well as heavy marketing), Korda- -Queenie, Curtain, etc.—sets his sights much lower than great tragedy and gives us a work of strong intelligence and ravishing vulgarity. Almost no event in it is unfamiliar, though its great garden of sex-play springs largely from imagination. Many readers will be dismayed by Korda's pillow talk among the gods, sex chat given a saltiness that may fit the actual MM & JFK but that looks cheap on paper. The story: MM, married to DiMaggio, meets Senator Kennedy at a Beverly Hills party; he gives her his card; they rendezvous. Marilyn is bored by her husbands and treats adultery like a midnight plum duff. She loves Jack, Jack loves MM. He has an arrangement with Jackie that his satyriasis need not be contained but must remain discreet; MM's being the most famous woman in the world, however, crimps JFK's ties with jealous Jackie, who finds out about the ongoing affair. Meanwhile, RFK attacks the Teamsters hierarchy, Dave Beck and Jimmy Hoffa, and Jimmy in turn bugs Peter Lawford's love-tryst bungalow, various hotel rooms, and MM's phone and bedroom, all of which are already bugged by J.Edgar Hoover's FBI team. Once JFK is president, he withdraws from MM. RFK becomes her lover, gets her with child. MM's meds take their toll, she becomes ever more erratic, puts unbearable strain on the Brothers K when she announces a tell-all press conference.... About midway, when the freshness of the lovers wanes and a certain sourness overtakes them, the story darkens and the mechanics of the many- leveled plot deflates the reader's gusto, though not Korda's. Many brilliant scenes, but not as artful or haunting as Sam Toperoff's 1991 MM novel, Queen of Desire. (Literary Guild Dual Selection for November)
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1992
ISBN: 0-671-74526-3
Page Count: 560
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1992
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
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
