Lots of fun.
A dizzyingly clever novel from Langer (My Father’s Bonus March, 2009, etc.) that explores the thin line between fact and fiction, and between memoir and novel.
Narrator Ian Minot, a frustrated writer, is angry that a hack named Blade Markham is being celebrated for a memoir about growing up on the mean streets of New York City, a memoir Ian is convinced Markham made up, his street cred being limited to copping an attitude and inserting “yo” at the end of every sentence. Soon Ian links up with Jed Roth, a fellow writer who’s penned The Thief of Manhattan, a novel about stealing a valuable copy of The Tale of Genji, burning down the library that housed it and murdering a couple of book fanatics. Jed persuades Ian to rewrite the novel, alter a few incidents and submit it to publisher Geoff Olden as a memoir. The plan is to have it become a bestseller and then publicly humiliate Olden (who’d published Markham’s book) when it’s revealed to be a fake. Ian’s life is complicated by his attachment to his girlfriend, Anya Petrescu, whose memoir about growing up in Romania, We Never Talked About Ceausescu, is creating buzz. Eventually Anya drops Ian and hooks up with Markham. Meanwhile, Ian scores a deal with Olden, famous for reading only the first and last pages of a manuscript. Ian’s “memoir” is published under the title The Thieves of Manhattan...but it turns out that Roth’s original manuscript is in fact based more on truth than on fiction and that Roth may have been manipulating Ian the entire time.
Lots of fun.Pub Date: July 13, 2010
ISBN: 978-1-4000-6891-3
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Spiegel & Grau
Review Posted Online: Jan. 5, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2010
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
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