A brutal phantasmagoria on the pleasures and perils of the dream factory.
Strivers in Hollywood: some rise to fame, others fall into the flames.
Wagner slims down from the delirious labyrinthine excess of I’ll Let You Go (2002) with this shorter, sharper tale of those battling toward the top of the Hollywood heap. Receiving top billing is Kit Lightwood, a Brad Pittesque hunk of burning stardom who is finally looking to be taken seriously as an actor. On the other end of the spectrum is Becca, as clueless as they come and wanting to be a star. Because of her apparent resemblance to Drew Barrymore, Becca gets a job as a Drew look-alike for a talent agency that specializes in such things. It’s a strange netherworld she enters into, including two battling Russell Crowe imitators, an experience that heightens Becca’s tabloid obsession with the real Drew, whom she commiserates with in long sprawling interior monologues (a Wagner specialty). Circling around the outside of this narrative is Lisanne, an executive secretary in her late 30s with a pathological fear of flying. Her seemingly mundane life intersects with Kit’s later on, but for too much of the time Wagner keeps her bumping around the story with little connection to the drama at its core. Kit’s life takes a downward turn when an attack by a rabid fan results in a head injury that takes months of recovery—his slow return to the media spotlight is written with extraordinary grace and an almost frightening knowledge of the vicissitudes of the media monster. At the same time, Becca’s life starts on the ascent when she gets cast as a corpse on Six Feet Under, which leads to her getting a role in the new Spike Jonze movie, about celebrity look-alikes. Wagner’s ability to limn the mercurial ways of Hollywood is astonishing, and he still writes with a fiery grace. Occasionally, he gets lost in the bushes, but he always bursts back out with a fury.
A brutal phantasmagoria on the pleasures and perils of the dream factory.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2003
ISBN: 0-7432-4337-4
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2003
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
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