An engaging romp that fuses love, art, and seedy, midcentury New York.
A struggling freelance artist in 1957 forms an unlikely relationship with a New York mobster in this quirky throwback to the ’50s crime novel.
Silva (The Patsey, 2012) begins his narrative with a bang—quite literally. Frank Caprizzi, former “Boss of the New York Underworld,” is shot (but not killed) in the lobby of the residential Royal Crest Hotel. After this grabber of an opening, readers meet protagonist Joe Marlin, a West Coast expatriate who has moved to New York City with his girlfriend, Gilda; he wants to establish himself as a career cartoonist, and she seeks to make her mark as an actress. They live in a $30-a-week Upper West Side hotel apartment, not far from where Caprizzi was shot. But Joe, a decent guy, soon finds himself pulled into a world of violence due to Gilda’s liaison with mob-connected producer Tony Richman. Gilda met Tony in postwar Germany, and now she hopes that he’ll be her ticket to stage and screen. What follows is betrayal, a few murders, and prolonged pub crawls that are almost Joe’s undoing. Ironically, Joe’s possible salvation arrives when he meets the recovering mobster Caprizzi, who loves the crime comics of the late 1940s and early ’50s. Silva apparently created Joe by drawing on aspects of his own biography: both were students at the LA–based Chouinard Art Institute, worked in Disney Studios’ animation department, and decided to try their luck as cartoonists in the Big Apple. The author draws upon this resume to deliver realistic descriptions of the mechanical details of Joe’s work, his weekly slogs trying to sell his cartoons, and his attempts at networking with other artists. With the eye of an artist and the heart of a romantic, Silva also takes readers on a nostalgic tour of 1957 New York, including visits to the jazz haunts and private artist parties of Greenwich Village in its heyday. Although the prose is neither elegant nor lyrical, it remains serviceable and adequately showcases the author’s bent for the dramatic. Joe’s alcoholic binges do become tiresome, but the book maintains a relatively quick pace, employing short chapters to propel the action forward.
An engaging romp that fuses love, art, and seedy, midcentury New York.Pub Date: June 1, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-61009-165-7
Page Count: 308
Publisher: Dark Oak Mysteries
Review Posted Online: Feb. 28, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
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
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BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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