A sometimes-crude but unique and oddly endearing tale of self-discovery.
A road novel from debut author Hasskamp about an out-of-work chef on the verge of turning 30.
Billy MacPherson is sitting in the Portland, Oregon, home where he grew up when he hears about his inheritance from his recently deceased father. Once the news sinks in, he throws a tantrum, because while Billy’s obnoxious relatives receive huge sums of money, Billy gets a 1981 DeLorean DMC-12 automobile. That the DeLorean is in pristine condition doesn’t comfort Billy, who simply sees it as another slap in the face. Recently, he saw his restaurant in New York City go out of business; then, unable to pay the rent on his apartment, he found himself evicted. Add into the mix the presence of Billy’s unstable ex-fiancee, Allison, and it seems like he might as well drive the DeLorean into the Willamette River. But he chooses instead to take the Back to the Future–esque car to visit old friends from culinary school. His trip winds up stretching from Portland to Los Angeles and includes copious amounts of food, vomit, and sexual derangement. The adventure is part Kitchen Confidential, part It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, with plenty of observations on California thrown in (as in a description of a “strange and beautiful” town: “There was an evenness to Cloverdale. The people were familiar, the businesses were familiar, the sights, sounds, and smells were familiar”). It’s a creative spin on the coming-of-age road-trip tale, even if certain bawdy moments can be startling: readers are not only treated to a scene of Billy masturbating in a treehouse but also to his friend’s mother’s graphic description of her son’s conception. The portions explaining the restaurant industry seem melodramatic at times (“Accolades mean nothing when you’re working the line”), although they do give the book a distinct voice; there are countless stories about young men at crossroads in life, but how many of those young men know how to handle a “900-degree grill”? Despite the bumpy road he travels, readers will likely want to know where Billy and his DeLorean wind up.
A sometimes-crude but unique and oddly endearing tale of self-discovery.Pub Date: June 20, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-5217-8473-0
Page Count: 345
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Aug. 10, 2017
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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