Pure, ridiculous fun for its own sake.
A debut collection of off-the-wall characters who meet their destiny at a seafood restaurant in Las Vegas in a series of linked comedic vignettes.
In one of these stories, young Jeremy Ekips, with no qualifications, applies for a job at Vageneral Cereals, and his perfunctory interview goes on a tangent when he describes his religion, which features a daffy creation myth of six squabbling gods forging the universe. In another tale, Wright, a used-trampoline salesman, is aggrieved by arrogant jingle writer David’s disrespectful treatment, so he contacts IZU, an assassination company offering elaborate package deals. Elsewhere, Roy Mackleburns, a Sherlock Holmes manqué of 1930, is investigating cases along with his sociopath sidekick, a hardened doorknob thief. Jenny, meanwhile, is a frustrated mom who wins $150 quintillion in a lottery and abandons her children to go to Las Vegas, where she gambles away most of her money immediately. Vegas is where all the characters’ paths converge, fatefully, at King Club Decker’s Casino, Hotel and Shrimp House. The book comes to an end with a “Foreword by Alexander Q. Sweisenhower,” lauding author O’Neal for attempting to change the way books are written—and failing. In truth, the whole raison d’être for this collection is the opener, in which boys steal a government time machine from Area 51 and use it to go back to the 1970s to save Karen Carpenter from starvation. Overall, O’Neal offers an absurdist, almost Dada-ist mix of short stories, fragments, and burlesques here that somewhat resemble the free-form prose fiction of the great comic innovator Spike Milligan. In the end, readers learn that this chaotic narrative was a collaborative story that the characters wrote for a lark. However, if the joke is on the reader, it’s no less enjoyable for that. It effectively showcases the writer’s bright, gonzo imagination, and one can take this collection in that same anything-goes spirit.
Pub Date: Sept. 18, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-5147-6275-2
Page Count: 256
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Dec. 11, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
APPRECIATIONS
© Copyright 2024 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
bookshelf
