The snappy dialogue and plot you’d expect from a veteran dramatist plus the rich exploration of character that novels are...
A rare honest story about love, ambition, and compromise.
“But what is a demimonde, anyway?” asks Alison Moore in the opening line of this novel by Rebeck, the creator of TV’s Smash and a widely produced playwright. Rebeck’s insider knowledge of the demimonde of entertainment and celebrity is put to excellent use as she tracks the upward trajectory of a young actress from Cincinnati, from cattle-call auditions for a two-line role through a lead in a television series and to the brink of Hollywood superstardom. Every type in showbiz is unmasked here, from the writer—“It’s only two lines but there has to be stakes”—to the columnist—“Hi Jessica, you look fantastic! Can I grab you for a few minutes to talk about your know-nothing role as a gun-toting whore in Evil Dead 12?”—to the actress herself, “light-headed with hunger all the time” on the orders of her agent: “Beautiful food is for you to look at, and other people to eat.” While her stock goes up careerwise, Alison’s personal life is in free-fall. The decision to move to New York abruptly ended her relationship with her high school sweetheart, Kyle, and their inability to recover ends up warping both of their lives. An idealistic doctor and a committed Catholic, shellshocked Kyle ends up in a pediatric practice catering to entitled suburbanites and, worse, married to a woman he doesn’t love. Every time Alison comes home for a visit, they run into each other and bad things happen. Though she’s something of a black sheep in her extended family, where grandchildren Nos. 8 and 9 are on the way, Alison identifies deeply with the Midwest itself, its culture, its values, its nice people with good manners. Even the parties are better, in her opinion.
The snappy dialogue and plot you’d expect from a veteran dramatist plus the rich exploration of character that novels are made for.Pub Date: Feb. 23, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-399-17288-5
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: Nov. 16, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PROFILES
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
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
APPRECIATIONS
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