Like a Bushnell character: glittery and irresistible but, likewise, ultimately unsatisfying.
From the writer of the original Sex and the City (1996), the source of the HBO series, four loosely linked stories (being marketed as a novel) about the glamorous exteriors and unfulfilled interiors of high-status, no-longer-young New Yorkers.
Starting with her New York Observer columns, Bushnell has chronicled the romantic plights of 30-ish women who look like they have everything, and spend their time trying to believe it. Here, she does a fine job of sketching her characters and portraying, both satirically and realistically, their elite social ecology (with enough of a roman à clef feel to get people talking), but the longer pieces call for greater narrative skills than Bushnell's able to muster. In “Nice N’Easy,” beautiful, cynical, gold-digger Janey Wilcox (whose situation strikingly parallels Lily Bart’s in The House of Mirth) has traded in her looks and the semi-celebrity of a once-promising modeling/acting career for a string of wealthy, unpleasant, summer boyfriends, tolerated for their luxurious Hamptons houses. A bid for independence (her own summer rental, paid for by a married Hollywood mogul plus an attempt at writing) fails, but an unexpected contract as a Victoria’s Secret model puts her back on top, and enables her to buy her own house. Likewise, in the amusing but slight “Crossing the Pond,” a blond, 40-ish, New York sex columnist travels to London in search of a husband, and leaves disappointed, only to find herself on the flight home seated next to the man she’s been looking. In grimmer scenarios, “Highlights (For Adults),” a driven, tightly wound journalist considers leaving her disappointing, less ambitious husband but, instead, both have flings and regroup; and in “Snow Angels,” Cecilia—part Princess Grace, part Princess Di—falls apart in New York and Cannes, abetted by her dangerous, Courtney Love–like, new best friend.
Like a Bushnell character: glittery and irresistible but, likewise, ultimately unsatisfying.Pub Date: Sept. 20, 2000
ISBN: 0-87113-819-0
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Atlantic Monthly
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2000
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles...
Sisters in and out of love.
Meghann Dontess is a high-powered matrimonial lawyer in Seattle who prefers sex with strangers to emotional intimacy: a strategy bound to backfire sooner or later, warns her tough-talking shrink. It’s advice Meghann decides to ignore, along with the memories of her difficult childhood, neglectful mother, and younger sister. Though she managed to reunite Claire with Sam Cavenaugh (her father but not Meghann’s) when her mother abandoned both girls long ago, Meghann still feels guilty that her sister’s life doesn’t measure up, at least on her terms. Never married, Claire ekes out a living running a country campground with her dad and is raising her six-year-old daughter on her own. When she falls in love for the first time with an up-and-coming country musician, Meghann is appalled: Bobby Austin is a three-time loser at marriage—how on earth can Claire be so blind? Bobby’s blunt explanation doesn’t exactly satisfy the concerned big sister, who busies herself planning Claire’s dream wedding anyway. And, to relieve the stress, she beds various guys she picks up in bars, including Dr. Joe Wyatt, a neurosurgeon turned homeless drifter after the demise of his beloved wife Diane (whom he euthanized). When Claire’s awful headache turns out to be a kind of brain tumor known among neurologists as a “terminator,” Joe rallies. Turns out that Claire had befriended his wife on her deathbed, and now in turn he must try to save her. Is it too late? Will Meghann find true love at last?
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles (Distant Shores, 2002, etc.). Kudos for skipping the snifflefest this time around.Pub Date: May 1, 2003
ISBN: 0-345-45073-6
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2003
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