Mostly frosting, not nearly enough cake.
Inflamed artistic temperaments and miscellaneous relationship issues preoccupy two generations of immediate and extended families—in a crowded debut by Esquire’s literary editor.
Somewhat contentedly married Merit Ash stoically endures her Mr. Fixit husband Wyatt’s finicky perfectionism, while performing her tasks for local regional magazine Ohio Is without tumbling too quickly into bed with sexy slacker co-worker Randy. Nor does Merit lack other baggage, most of it inherited from her father, Lowell Haven, a flamboyant artist best known for his absurdly egocentric “self-portraits” (Lowell as the Wife of Bath and other Canterbury Pilgrims, Lowell Crucified with Cow Crucified Next to Him, etc.), and mother Jenny, herself a painter, long divorced from Lowell, whose imagined grisly deaths dominate many of her canvasses. We learn their histories through omniscient narration of Merit’s increasingly distracted misadventures; excerpts from Jenny’s diary detailing her flight to London in the 1970s, “work” as a woefully unqualified au pair for a bisexual rich twit’s family, and fateful meeting with dashing young Lowell; and the très gai effusions of real estate heir Fergus Goodwyn, who was Jenny’s high school confidant, and now lives with his lover Lowell (and other spongers) at On Ne Peut Pas Vivre Seul, a 65-room mansion smack in the middle of the Ohio heartland, that’s a cross between Fawlty Towers and Michael Jackson’s Neverland. The story’s actions (so to speak) are focused toward a lavish climactic party, at which it seems perfectly reasonable when the Ashes’ preadolescent daughter Caroline arrives costumed as Caligula, and no big deal when Jenny reveals what’s meant to be a bombshell but in fact strikes us as simply further calculated eccentricity. It’s all funny for a while, but eventually the reader feels as if trapped at an endless cocktail party, pinned in a corner with Truman Capote, Nancy Mitford and Alec Guinness as Gully Jimson in The Horse’s Mouth.
Mostly frosting, not nearly enough cake.Pub Date: May 4, 2005
ISBN: 0-374-12512-0
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2005
BOOK REVIEW
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
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
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