Just call it Bridget Jones Goes to Washington or Sex and the Capital City, though readers hoping for some real-life dirt (or...
This debut novel by Cox, the political gossipeuse responsible for the popular Wonkette website, takes chick lit from the campaign trail into the blogosphere, with results that make Primary Colors read like Proust.
Meet Melanie Thorton, a voluptuous, 28-year-old Iowa lass who has retained some of her plucky idealism while submerged in a presidential-campaign cesspool. As the communications spinner for the Democratic challenger, she must counter accusations that the stiff, patrician Ivy League candidate (sound familiar?) was brainwashed during his college days, in a manner reminiscent of The Manchurian Candidate. She must also deal with the fallout from her ongoing fling with a very influential political reporter—older, more powerful and married—whose TV program serves to establish the agenda for the week’s Washington dialogue. In her attempt to divert attention toward the failings of the Republican incumbent, a president notorious for his foot-in-mouth malapropisms (sound familiar?), and to deflect scrutiny from her own personal life, she helps concoct an outrageous scheme to occupy the press during the August “dog days” between the two conventions. She and her inevitable gal-pal sidekick, a consultant with greater financial resources and fewer scruples, establish a website for a Capital call girl with a Rolodex filled with big-name Washington players. Once the site captures the media’s attention, the schemers cast a nubile, sexually voracious waitress to embody the role that they’ve been writing for her. Can the scam continue to take the heat off Melanie and her candidate? Will the phony call girl turn on her creators? Is Melanie using her reporter-lover? Or is he using her? Can a writer who has built her reputation on gossip snippets sustain enough narrative momentum and depth of character to make anyone care?
Just call it Bridget Jones Goes to Washington or Sex and the Capital City, though readers hoping for some real-life dirt (or at least a salacious facsimile) will be dealt nothing more than lightweight fluff and throwaway farce.Pub Date: Jan. 5, 2006
ISBN: 1-59448-901-7
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Riverhead
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2005
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles...
Sisters in and out of love.
Meghann Dontess is a high-powered matrimonial lawyer in Seattle who prefers sex with strangers to emotional intimacy: a strategy bound to backfire sooner or later, warns her tough-talking shrink. It’s advice Meghann decides to ignore, along with the memories of her difficult childhood, neglectful mother, and younger sister. Though she managed to reunite Claire with Sam Cavenaugh (her father but not Meghann’s) when her mother abandoned both girls long ago, Meghann still feels guilty that her sister’s life doesn’t measure up, at least on her terms. Never married, Claire ekes out a living running a country campground with her dad and is raising her six-year-old daughter on her own. When she falls in love for the first time with an up-and-coming country musician, Meghann is appalled: Bobby Austin is a three-time loser at marriage—how on earth can Claire be so blind? Bobby’s blunt explanation doesn’t exactly satisfy the concerned big sister, who busies herself planning Claire’s dream wedding anyway. And, to relieve the stress, she beds various guys she picks up in bars, including Dr. Joe Wyatt, a neurosurgeon turned homeless drifter after the demise of his beloved wife Diane (whom he euthanized). When Claire’s awful headache turns out to be a kind of brain tumor known among neurologists as a “terminator,” Joe rallies. Turns out that Claire had befriended his wife on her deathbed, and now in turn he must try to save her. Is it too late? Will Meghann find true love at last?
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles (Distant Shores, 2002, etc.). Kudos for skipping the snifflefest this time around.Pub Date: May 1, 2003
ISBN: 0-345-45073-6
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2003
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
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BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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