John Cheever’s son (The Partisan, 1994, etc.) follows in the footsteps, if not quite in the spirit, of his father in this witty send-up of politics, publishing, and crime—and of the synergy they generate on really good days. Noel Hammersmith is an editor at prestigious Acropolis Press (Kafka’s first American publisher), where he edits diet books and dreams of getting himself down to 138 pounds. A Westchester commuter with a true Walter Mitty streak, Noel takes out his many daily frustrations by writing venomous letters to companies that have earned his wrath, including Brooks Brothers (for discontinuing their classic Brooks Blue shirt) and Golden Rule Vitamins (for selling weight-loss products that failed to help Noel lose weight). He also begins negotiations for a manuscript with an author who calls himself Che Guevara; the proposed book will describe terrorist networks and how they operate in the US. Soon afterward, a succession of extremely powerful homemade bombs is set off in public places around New York by someone known as the “Wordsworth Bomber——whom Noel, of course, suspects to be Che. Uncovering a bizarre anti-immigration cult that is linked to Che, he finds himself wanting to broadcast its political ramblings across the entire country. Has Noel, through his interest in Che’s book, become implicated in a nativist cult? What is Noel’s first duty here: to his country, or to his author? Or is it to his own career? Acropolis Press, after all, is being bought out (by a pet food company called Pretty Kitty, Inc.), and everyone’s job is on the line. Noel has a hard time sorting out his loyalties, but in the end he makes a deal with both the police and with Che that results in a fate that Noel could never have imagined even in his most fervid daydreams—and that makes him a very thin man. Hilarious and just bad-natured enough to be cruel (that is, accurate) in its satire of modern greed and modern fame: an across- the-board winner.
Pub Date: April 28, 1999
ISBN: 0-609-60005-2
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 1999
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
BOOK REVIEW
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