Ideal for those who find the concept of a news conference for a gay Central Park carriage horse hilarious, but the humor may...
From debut author Smith comes a collection of short comedy pieces.
What might it be like to work closely with New Jersey governor and presidential candidate Chris Christie? As the narrator explains, “I’d like to think I’m his friend, but I know I’m not. Food is this guy’s friend.” What might the contents of Osama bin Laden’s diary be like? As bin Laden laments, “I can only get pornography by courier on flash drives…it is so old the last one starred Betty White.” What about “masterpieces of self-publishing” like Tollbooths by Earl Slavin, which consists of “An exhaustive survey of tollbooths from fabled trolls to modern RFID readers”? Exploring these and other such whimsical considerations, the reader is taken on a kooky journey through the silly (proposed “Jewish/American combined holidays” include “Oy, the Labor Day” and “Thankshavuot Day”) and the bawdy (such as the chapter entitled “How You Can Tell If Your Gynecologist Is Secretly Filming You”). Reminiscent of Jack Handey and other “Shouts & Murmurs” contributors, the book targets an audience comfortable with puns, flights of fancy, and fare less likely to see the pages of a publication like the New Yorker. Will the repeal of “don’t ask, don’t tell” portend the loss of the rank of “rear admiral” and the substitution of Brazilian waxing for waterboarding? How far might the Christie campaign get with slogans like “Frosting You Can Believe In” and “Two Chickens on Every Plate”? Rooted very much in the present, many jokes may not age well. Readers, however, annoyed by Citi Bikes, Hamid Karzai, and Donald Trump will have found an author to articulate such concerns, even if those concerns may not last. Brief, the pieces move quickly throughout, providing the opportunity to get through the entirety in an afternoon or less.
Ideal for those who find the concept of a news conference for a gay Central Park carriage horse hilarious, but the humor may not be universal.Pub Date: Sept. 8, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-692-23072-5
Page Count: 152
Publisher: Prime Prods Press
Review Posted Online: Sept. 15, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
Britisher Swift's sixth novel (Ever After, 1992 etc.) and fourth to appear here is a slow-to-start but then captivating tale of English working-class families in the four decades following WW II. When Jack Dodds dies suddenly of cancer after years of running a butcher shop in London, he leaves a strange request—namely, that his ashes be scattered off Margate pier into the sea. And who could better be suited to fulfill this wish than his three oldest drinking buddies—insurance man Ray, vegetable seller Lenny, and undertaker Vic, all of whom, like Jack himself, fought also as soldiers or sailors in the long-ago world war. Swift's narrative start, with its potential for the melodramatic, is developed instead with an economy, heart, and eye that release (through the characters' own voices, one after another) the story's humanity and depth instead of its schmaltz. The jokes may be weak and self- conscious when the three old friends meet at their local pub in the company of the urn holding Jack's ashes; but once the group gets on the road, in an expensive car driven by Jack's adoptive son, Vince, the story starts gradually to move forward, cohere, and deepen. The reader learns in time why it is that no wife comes along, why three marriages out of three broke apart, and why Vince always hated his stepfather Jack and still does—or so he thinks. There will be stories of innocent youth, suffering wives, early loves, lost daughters, secret affairs, and old antagonisms—including a fistfight over the dead on an English hilltop, and a strewing of Jack's ashes into roiling seawaves that will draw up feelings perhaps unexpectedly strong. Without affectation, Swift listens closely to the lives that are his subject and creates a songbook of voices part lyric, part epic, part working-class social realism—with, in all, the ring to it of the honest, human, and true.
Pub Date: April 5, 1996
ISBN: 0-679-41224-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 1996
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