by Bill Flanagan ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 1, 2000
Flanagan, a senior vice president of VHI who has written extensively about the music industry, takes to fiction like an old...
Debut about the music industry by a writer who's in it and loves it, discords and all.
Thirty-year-old Jim Cantone has the ear and the feel, which is why he's been scoring so consistently as a rock ’n’ roll talent scout. Now multinational WorldWide Records, situated in the heart of Times Square, wants him to become head of its A&R (Artists & Repertoire) division. Wild Bill DeGaul, a seminal figure in the history of the industry, runs the company; J.B. Booth is his savvy second in command. Although Jim understands the downside of WorldWide—or at least he thinks he does—in terms of loss of independence, the money is hard to turn down. And, as the father of three-year-old twin sons, he does have a growing family to consider. So he signs on. At the beginning, the experience is nothing but positive. Marketing support from a company with deep pockets and an entrepreneurial spirit enables Jim to help develop deserving young performers in a way he never could have before. As for DeGaul and Booth, Jim comes to admire them both: DeGaul, the iconoclastic charmer, the music-industry visionary; Booth, the shrewd street fighter now turned man of business. Plus, he admires their friendship—so longstanding and seemingly impregnable. Except that suddenly it’s not. Ambition strikes Booth hard, and the Iago side of him, repressed though always present, breaks free. He wants power, maximum power, and all of it in his hands. As usual, he gets what he goes after. And also as usual, the price tag is higher than the one envisioned.
Flanagan, a senior vice president of VHI who has written extensively about the music industry, takes to fiction like an old hand. Fast-paced, funny, poignant, and, of course, sharply observed, this is first and foremost an entertainment. But Flanagan’s music industry is additionally a legitimate and unsettling metaphor for the way we live now.Pub Date: June 1, 2000
ISBN: 0-375-50266-1
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2000
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by J.D. Salinger ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 15, 1951
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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by Kristin Hannah ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 1, 2006
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
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