A sweet, but not saccharine, comic novel.
Fed-up employees of a Boston pet-shelter network plot the comeuppance of their egomaniacal boss in this comic novel.
Diane Salvi, 25, the new communications director of the Animal Protection Organization, is a conscientious animal lover who wants to make a real contribution. But her boss, Hal Mason, keeps thwarting her best ideas in favor of his own vanity projects. Her co-workers—Hal’s assistant, Betty, and Southern belle fundraising director, Mary-Day—are smart women, dedicated to animal welfare. They sympathize with Diane, but Hal is the board of directors’ golden boy, despite his crudity and malapropisms. (At one point, Diane describes him as “Brad Pitt on the outside, Borat on the inside.”) When Hal finally overreaches, Diane and friends begin a covert investigation, aided by Diane’s friend and roommate Genie, a reporter for a local paper—but Diane’s relationship with Mark, Hal’s son, complicates things. A novel that features abandoned pets and animals could be heavy-handed, but Brown ((A)Musings, 2013, etc.) has a light touch, acknowledging sadness but avoiding gratuitous sentimentality. The characters’ well-developed back stories allow readers to make sense of their personalities and choices. Diane’s wry, comic voice is smart and enjoyable, and her romantic travails realistically lead her to greater self-knowledge. Hal’s well-drawn narcissism is funny and exasperating, and the excerpt from the book he’s “writing” is a dead-on portrayal of egotistical self-delusion. Brown’s exploration of Hal’s character also goes beneath the surface to look at the politics of Boston’s academic and Brahmin worlds. The author’s real-life experience with professional fundraising makes such concerns in the novel ring true. In the end, Diane and her friends cook up an extremely satisfying and well-timed showdown that will leave readers satisfied.
A sweet, but not saccharine, comic novel.Pub Date: June 6, 2013
ISBN: 978-1484107607
Page Count: 254
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: July 11, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2013
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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