An entertaining and thoughtful account of loss and artistic ambition.
A young, troubled celebrity turns to a friend for salvation.
Pop star Ananda Dawn crashes her rental car into the Eiffel Tower. She is immediately swarmed by paparazzi, and suspected of driving while under the influence of drugs. She charms her way out of a difficult bind, but immediately flies back to the United States to seek out the companionship of her estranged friend, Margaret “Mag” Woods. Years earlier, Ananda’s biography, written by her manager, painted a bacchanalia-inspired picture of Mag’s friendship with the singer, which included unrestrained promiscuity and rampant drug use. The scandal that ensued nearly ended Mag’s career as a therapist. Ananda, who wants to mend fences and revive the friendship, furtively drugs Mag’s tea, calls her boss and quits on her behalf, and convinces her to become the star’s manager. Mag accepts the position on the condition that Ananda seek professional help for her drug addiction. Looming in the background is the fact that Mag has just written an unflattering book about Ananda, soon to be published by a major press outlet. Meanwhile, Mag feels torn between becoming a fully responsible adult and indulging a wilder side that not only craves spontaneity, but also artistic fulfillment: “My creative brain burst to life while my rational brain loosened its vise-like grip. I’d spent years sharpening it, and then it became the least important thing in the world.” Debut author Taylor writes with a punchy flair, and manages to conjure a protagonist both infuriating and beguiling simultaneously. Mag turns out to be a fascinatingly complex character as well. Her creative ambition—and a sorrowful loss experienced at the height of the women’s friendship—constitutes the powerful bond between the two, who turn out to have a deeper kinship than one initially suspects. The plot, problematically, is sometimes a bit contrived, and will likely elicit the reader’s incredulity. For example, Mag is weirdly unperturbed by the fact that she was drugged, and inexplicably ready to ditch her career at a moment’s notice. She also seems aggrieved by her loss of professional credibility, but the book she writes to vindicate herself seems destined to only exacerbate the problem. The intelligently crafted characters—and the nuanced relationships between them—compensate for these failings.
An entertaining and thoughtful account of loss and artistic ambition.Pub Date: Dec. 19, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-5188-2759-4
Page Count: 403
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Aug. 31, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
Soft-focus story moves right along with few surprises. This time around, Hannah avoids the soap-opera complications of her...
Another middle-aged mom in a muddle.
After years of false starts and big hopes, Elizabeth’s ruggedly handsome husband Jack, a former football star, just landed a spot as a sportscaster on national news. He still loves her, even though much younger women are giving him come-hither looks. Heck, he doesn’t want to betray the love of his life after she helped him kick drugs and stuck by him even when he was a struggling has-been. And won’t it seem hypocritical if he fools around with his sexy assistant while he does in-depth reporting on a rape case involving a famous basketball center? Well, he fools around anyway. Elizabeth, nicknamed Birdie, knows nothing of this, but she withdraws from Jack when her hard-drinking, salt-of-the-earth father has a stroke and dies. Now no one will call her “sugar beet” ever again. Time to return home to Tennessee and contend with Anita, the sort-of-evil stepmother so trashy she wears pink puffy slippers all day long. Naturally, it turns out that Anita actually has a heart of gold and knows a few things about Birdie’s dead mother that were hushed up for years. Mom was an artist, just like Birdie, and an old scandal comes to light as Anita unrolls a vibrant canvas that portrays her secret lover. Perhaps, Birdie muses, her mother died of heartbreak, never having followed her true love or developed her talent. Has she, too, compromised everything she holds dear? Hoping to find out, Birdie joins a support group that promises to reconnect confused women with their passion. She and Jack separate, prompting a how-dare-you fit from their grown daughters. Will Birdie fly her empty nest? Will she go back to college for a degree in art? Will her brooding watercolors ever sell?
Soft-focus story moves right along with few surprises. This time around, Hannah avoids the soap-opera complications of her previous tales (Summer Island, 2001, etc.).Pub Date: July 1, 2002
ISBN: 0-345-45071-X
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2002
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