Brown’s got a bad habit of getting too close to real life, then backing off into over-the-top satire. Still, he spins a...
Switching scenery and stories like an expert channel-changer, an Emmy Award–winning TV writer, producer, and director depicts the vicissitudes of the broadcast life, taking apart its protagonist from a hundred different angles and editing them together into a rough but enlightening tale.
Brown’s semiconfessional debut has a lot to fit in, but manages to do so without ever seeming rushed. Caesar Fortunato is an Italian guy from South Philly who—more through luck and accident than early career-building skill—ended up at a mere 19 directing live television shows at the local affiliate. Decades later, in his late-middle-age, Caesar has a shelf full of directing and producing Emmys, two estranged children, a younger and bitter wife, a severe lack of perspective, and habits involving controlled substances, prostitutes, and gambling that could generously be described as problematic. Sick of his profligate ways and relentless flaunting of authority, Caesar’s new boss, a hard-nosed ex-Marine who knows nothing about TV and could care less about Caesar’s skill and innovations (e.g., the instant replay and blimp shots) decides to harass the man out of his contract. Instead of being insulted by the order to direct a saccharine, live Disney special, the tyrannical and bile-filled Caesar leaps at the opportunity to go ridiculously overbudget and to fill the screen with as much lewd filth as he can dredge up. Brown recounts the rise and fall (and rise and fall) of Caesar’s career in short flashes, always coming back to the breathlessly detailed scenes of high-wire tension in the control rooms where the buzz that keeps Caesar coming back for more is palpable. Media insiders will scour these pages for references to oversized figures like James Cameron and what appears to be a caricature of Howard Cosell.
Brown’s got a bad habit of getting too close to real life, then backing off into over-the-top satire. Still, he spins a pretty thrilling story of the power of addiction—in all its forms.Pub Date: Aug. 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-609-60615-8
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2001
BOOK REVIEW
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
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
© Copyright 2026 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.
