The ravings of a writer who is either on drugs or off his meds.
A novel of contemporary Hollywood, featuring dozens of real celebrities and a few invented ones.
Nominally the story of a lesbian movie star named Dusty Wilding and the intrigues surrounding her search for her long-lost daughter, this book is in such poor taste, so wildly overwritten, and so apparently unedited that its main use is in a party game where people pass it around and read sentences aloud at random. Perhaps you will get this one. “Embedded in the lining of the net, the Fappening’s birth had been inevitable, yet fate and history had chosen him to summon the lava flow of exposed taboo bodymaps—Jennifer Lawrence’s and lesser cousins’—that verily swamped Old Reality, engulfing the pristine, elitist coastal cities of the lascivious, clay-footed gods of TMZ.” Or maybe this one: “ ‘I don’t know,’ said Tessa. ‘I think I’m kinda over it. He says he wants to take me to Turks and Caikos [sic]. I call it Kikes and Jerkoffs…he has this boat. Or says he has a boat. So far, all I’ve seen are fucking pictures. On Instagram. He takes more pictures of that boat than he does of his dick. Whatever.’ ” Or this: “What really galled him was when she said it was ‘okay’ to want to die for a moral cause and went on to invoke burning nuns as if self-immolation was something everyone should aspire to. In the same breath, he admitted there would be something immensely appealing about watching Cara Delevingne, Kendall and Gigi Hadid set themselves on fire in real time on BuzzFeed.” Wagner (Dead Stars, 2012, etc.) knows enough about Hollywood and its denizens to have written a Bret Easton Ellis–style nasty satire. Maybe that book is buried in here somewhere, under the run-on sentences, the scattershot italics, the tedious and constant namedropping, and the five- and seven-page monologues by minor characters, which inevitably contain more italics, namedropping, and demented writing. All that plus the interweaving of a ludicrous melodramatic plot about mistaken parentage, a sex cult, an organ transplant, suicide, and brain trauma is just more than any reader could possibly bear.
The ravings of a writer who is either on drugs or off his meds.Pub Date: March 1, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-39915-936-7
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Blue Rider Press
Review Posted Online: Dec. 7, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2015
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with...
Talk-show queen takes tumble as millions jeer.
Nora Bridges is a wildly popular radio spokesperson for family-first virtues, but her loyal listeners don't know that she walked out on her husband and teenaged daughters years ago and didn't look back. Now that a former lover has sold racy pix of naked Nora and horny himself to a national tabloid, her estranged daughter Ruby, an unsuccessful stand-up comic in Los Angeles, has been approached to pen a tell-all. Greedy for the fat fee she's been promised, Ruby agrees and heads for the San Juan Islands, eager to get reacquainted with the mom she plans to betray. Once in the family homestead, nasty Ruby alternately sulks and glares at her mother, who is temporarily wheelchair-bound as a result of a post-scandal car crash. Uncaring, Ruby begins writing her side of the story when she's not strolling on the beach with former sweetheart Dean Sloan, the son of wealthy socialites who basically ignored him and his gay brother Eric. Eric, now dying of cancer and also in a wheelchair, has returned to the island. This dismal threesome catch up on old times, recalling their childhood idylls on the island. After Ruby's perfect big sister Caroline shows up, there's another round of heartfelt talk. Nora gradually reveals the truth about her unloving husband and her late father's alcoholism, which led her to seek the approval of others at the cost of her own peace of mind. And so on. Ruby is aghast to discover that she doesn't know everything after all, but Dean offers her subdued comfort. Happy endings await almost everyone—except for readers of this nobly preachy snifflefest.
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with syrupy platitudes about life and love.Pub Date: March 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-609-60737-5
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2001
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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