Still, who wouldn’t pay to hear Sinatra with the sniffles? It is Berger, and it’s essential reading.
Berger’s deliciously deadpan 23rd reworks the vein of satiric fantasy prominently displayed in such predecessors as Vital Parts (1970) and Regiment of Women (1973).
It begins with an expository sentence that ought to be worshipped by writing students—the thrust of which is that “animatronics technician” Ellery Pierce attempts to repair his failures with real women by creating a mechanical one. The result of his Frankensteinian labors is Phyllis, a gorgeous, superefficient domestic paragon and sexual partner “who” draws rave reviews from houseguests, but consigns Ellery to unemployment, indigence, and depression when his creation develops a mind, so to speak, of her own. Phyllis leaves him to pursue a show biz career, working as a stripper and lap dancer, phone-sex caller, and star of a “voyeur website,” before finding her niche in community theater and acquiring useful notoriety for her unconventional interpretation of Lady Macbeth. Hollywood stardom follows; her ambitious “Camille” remake flops: reenter Ellery, who has pulled himself together to manage Phyllis’s new conquest of afternoon TV, even greater celebrity, leading to—what else? —the White House. The amusing dénouement pits Phyllis against President Joe Sloan, a hilarious amalgam of LBJ’s and Bill Clinton’s worst qualities, and her accession to power persuades Ellery that one final “adjustment” is required. This dour novel, an obvious lineal descendant of Jerzy Kosinski’s Being There and Richard Condon’s The Manchurian Candidate, has many enviable virtues. Berger has long since mastered a narrative concision that few living writers (perhaps only Muriel Spark) can equal, and his incidental potshots at reality TV, political correctness, media overkill, and other wretched excesses will have readers chuckling with malicious pleasure. It’s all a bit hurried, though (the ending is particularly abrupt): not quite vintage Berger, therefore.
Still, who wouldn’t pay to hear Sinatra with the sniffles? It is Berger, and it’s essential reading.Pub Date: May 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-7432-5740-5
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 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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