Passionate to a fault, in a way that’s inspiring even as it becomes furiously repetitive.
The noted cartoonist’s first collection renders modern politics as lamentable spectacle.
Modern political cartoonists come in two varieties: The gray-haired dinosaurs doing carefully mild bipartisan humor for the big dailies get what meager glory there is; the rest are mired in the netherworld of free alternative weeklies, hopefully away from the escort ads. Sutton belongs to the latter group; his profanely funny work is seen most often in the Village Voice, occasionally in publications as far flung as the New York Times. While this roundup is far from essential reading, there’s enough good material here to warm the heart of any good blue-state resident. Sutton tends to work from roughly a half-dozen topics: the spinelessness of Democrats, the warmongering of the Bush White House, the cowardice of the mainstream media, the utter and depraved evil of Dick Cheney. His tone of unrelieved and exasperated anger is free from the irony of cozier satirists like Jon Stewart. The clownish artwork and constant, juvenile nastiness can be cloying after a while, as evidence by the one-panel of Donald Rumsfeld masturbating to war footage, a joke that might have seemed funny to someone putting together a college newspaper at four in the morning. Nothing here achieves the satiric insight of, say, Tom Tomorrow, one of Sutton’s closest peers. That said, one strip, “Visitors,” achieves a sublime greatness through its horrific portrait of a man desperately waving from a smoking window of the World Trade Center. Wondering if anyone can see him, he has visions of everyone from a soldier (“I can see you. Your death will motivate me to kill others”), to a lawyer (“I’ll fight to get you and your survivors a sizable, respectable settlement”), to Osama bin Laden (“I can see you. And I’m laughing”). It also stands out simply because it’s one of the only pieces here to deviate from the usual carping.
Passionate to a fault, in a way that’s inspiring even as it becomes furiously repetitive.Pub Date: June 15, 2005
ISBN: 1-58322-677-X
Page Count: 128
Publisher: Seven Stories
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2005
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with...
Talk-show queen takes tumble as millions jeer.
Nora Bridges is a wildly popular radio spokesperson for family-first virtues, but her loyal listeners don't know that she walked out on her husband and teenaged daughters years ago and didn't look back. Now that a former lover has sold racy pix of naked Nora and horny himself to a national tabloid, her estranged daughter Ruby, an unsuccessful stand-up comic in Los Angeles, has been approached to pen a tell-all. Greedy for the fat fee she's been promised, Ruby agrees and heads for the San Juan Islands, eager to get reacquainted with the mom she plans to betray. Once in the family homestead, nasty Ruby alternately sulks and glares at her mother, who is temporarily wheelchair-bound as a result of a post-scandal car crash. Uncaring, Ruby begins writing her side of the story when she's not strolling on the beach with former sweetheart Dean Sloan, the son of wealthy socialites who basically ignored him and his gay brother Eric. Eric, now dying of cancer and also in a wheelchair, has returned to the island. This dismal threesome catch up on old times, recalling their childhood idylls on the island. After Ruby's perfect big sister Caroline shows up, there's another round of heartfelt talk. Nora gradually reveals the truth about her unloving husband and her late father's alcoholism, which led her to seek the approval of others at the cost of her own peace of mind. And so on. Ruby is aghast to discover that she doesn't know everything after all, but Dean offers her subdued comfort. Happy endings await almost everyone—except for readers of this nobly preachy snifflefest.
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with syrupy platitudes about life and love.Pub Date: March 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-609-60737-5
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2001
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
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