Et cetera. The concept of mid-tier celebrities on the nation's hottest shopping channel may have enormous possibilities, but...
A first novel that tries for the fierce bite of satire but ends up with not much more than nasty little nibbles at the familiar.
Pity the talent on the shop-at-home channel dubbed—yes—Sellevision. During the “Toys for Tots” segment of Slumber Sunday Sundown, gay, lonesome Max inadvertently exposes himself in front of 60 million kids and their parents and loses his job—and any possibility of another. On-air person Peggy Jean Smythe, meanwhile, is a clueless, churchy mother, the oldest of whose three sons would rather play with C-4 than Silly Putty because of issues he has with mother dear. When she's bundled off ranting to detox and rehab for 30 days to get in touch with her addiction to Valium and alcohol, her much deprived husband takes up with Nikki, the almost 16-year-old Lolita from next door whose issues are a whole lot more fun—not to mention kinky—than Peggy Jean's. Then there's Leigh, who is having an affair with married boss Howard Toast, who shows no signs of leaving his own wife. Until, that is, Leigh, after consulting with already-exposed Max, exposes Toast on air and gets him fired and kicked out of his wife's house—whereupon Leigh becomes a feminist icon and much-sought-after talk show guest. And then there's Bebe, Sellevision's most successful host, who finds Mr. Right through a personal ad she puts on the Internet—except that he just might turn out to be the long-lost brother her mother put up for adoption before she was born.
Et cetera. The concept of mid-tier celebrities on the nation's hottest shopping channel may have enormous possibilities, but greater wit and sophistication than Burroughs seems able to summon—so far—are needed to raise this outing from the banalities of soap and silliness to the power of real satire.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2000
ISBN: 0-312-26772-X
Page Count: 208
Publisher: St. Martin's Griffin
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2000
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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