A bawdy tale of parenthood told by a typical Carter (Saints and Sinners, 1986) heroine: witty, brash, and a sucker for farce who gives a story a good feminist spin. The septuagenarian Chance sisters, identical twins Dora and Nora, may like all wise children know their father, though the paternity has never been acknowledged, but they also learn here that after all these years they can't be too certain about their mother. Already busy on her memoirs, Dora begins her tale—told with all the innuendos and humor of the vaudeville comedians she once knew—on the day the sisters are invited to attend the hundredth birthday celebration of their father, the great Shakespearean actor Sir Melchior Hazard. The family bloodlines, Dora tells, were never all that clear: it has long been believed that a young lead—rather than aging grandfather Hazard, married to a much younger actress—was the real father of Sir Melchior and his twin, the lovable and rich Perry. It's also been believed that the eponymously named Chance sisters were the result of a liaison between their father and a young woman who died conveniently at their birth. Raised by the mysterious Mrs. Chance, the beloved ``Granny,'' the talented twins were soon dancing and acting in variety shows, having affairs with the great and not-so-great and- -the climax of their careers—making a movie in Hollywood, where Dora had an affair with a writer, whose resemblance to F. Scott Fitzgerald is quite intended. In between, Uncle Perry came bearing gifts; they met their father's three wives, and watched from the sidelines the goings-on of their half-siblings, whose own paternity is not all that clear either. An amusing romp through theatrical history that tries to answer but doesn't quite—the jokiness is ultimately too much and out of place—a serious question: What defines the true parent- -blood or the actual rearing? Accessible but thin.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1992
ISBN: 0-374-29133-0
Page Count: 232
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 1991
BOOK REVIEW
None
This is a book which courts the dangers of two extremes. It can be taken not seriously enough or, more likely, critical climate considered, too seriously. Kesey's first novel is narrated by a half-Indian schizophrenic who has withdrawn completely by feigning deaf-muteness. It is set in a mental ward ruled by Big Nurse — a monumental matriarch who keeps her men in line by some highly original disciplinary measures: Nursey doesn't spank, but oh that electric shock treatment! Into the ward swaggers McMurphy, a lusty gambling man with white whales on his shorts and the psychology of unmarried nurses down to a science. He leads the men on to a series of major victories, including the substitution of recent issues of Nuggetand Playboyfor some dated McCall's. The fatuity of hospital utilitarianism, that alcohol-swathed brand of idiocy responsible for the custom of waking patients from a deep sleep in order to administer barbiturates, is countered by McMurphy's simple, articulate, logic. This is a thoroughly enthralling, brilliantly tempered novel, peopled by at least two unforgettable characters. (Big Nurse is custom tailored for a busty Eileen Heckert.) Though extension is possible, make no mistake about it; this is a ward and not a microcosm.
None NonePub Date: Feb. 1, 1962
ISBN: 0451163966
Page Count: 335
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Sept. 26, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1961
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
APPRECIATIONS
With rich people behaving scandalously on every page, this lemon is juicy and delicious.
Weisberger (The Singles Game, 2016, etc.) gives rich-lit fans a second spinoff of her best-known novel, The Devil Wears Prada, shifting her lens from long-suffering Andrea Sachs to Emily Charlton, the snippy fashionista who worked as top assistant to Runway magazine’s hellish editor, Miranda Priestly.
A decade after leaving Runway, Emily has successfully reinvented herself as a celebrity stylist and image consultant specializing in crisis management. But it’s her own career that’s in jeopardy when a hotshot rival starts luring away Emily’s Hollywood clients with millennial social media superpowers. Emily needs a big win or she may as well pack it up and head back to Runway. Thankfully, her childhood friend Miriam Kagan has just the gig for her. Miriam recently moved to tony Greenwich, Connecticut, where former supermodel and current senator’s wife Karolina Hartwell is hiding out after a brush with the law. Something about Karolina’s DUI arrest just doesn’t add up, though. Miriam dusts off her Harvard law degree and Emily kicks into high gear, discovering their friend Karolina has been set up by her husband, an ambitious politician with his eye on the White House. Now the three friends must take him down. Having a kick-ass girl posse is not only great fun, but essential for survival in this town filled with moms obsessed with SoulCycle, trophy kids, and plastic surgery—including having their vaginas “custom fit” for their husbands. In one scene, a designer-clad mom hosts a sex-toy party where the constant drumbeat is fear that husbands will abandon wives who aren’t smokin’ hot and sexually available at all times. (Every sex toy is discussed in terms of how much pleasure it will bring the men.) Emily, Miriam, and Karolina pose a refreshing contrast to the Greenwich moms who all seem to be swimming in the extremely shallow end of the pool.
With rich people behaving scandalously on every page, this lemon is juicy and delicious.Pub Date: June 5, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-4767-7844-0
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 14, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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