An excruciatingly witty debut from screenwriter Wolper, set in Hollywood and full of glam-girl insights on love, sex, success—and the search for “Mr. Maybe.” Elizabeth West is a down-home Hollywood girl, the sort who understands the etiquette of twin beds in Palm Springs and designer champagne at story meetings. A screenwriter, Elizabeth has made her name in the very macho sub-world of action-moron films, and much of her job is consumed by questions of finding the right firearms for the right scene. Although “estrogen” is usually a put-down in her patois, she is surprised to find herself gradually succumbing to the biological clock. She’s 28, after all, which puts her at the start of the “zone—: the prime years (28—35) for finding a man and settling down. But, living in Hollywood, Elizabeth can—t exactly start hanging out at church socials. She has to come up with a treatment, then polish off the edges as she goes along. There’s Jake: a director of some note, who’s been Elizabeth’s mentor and (at 40) father-figure for some time. She admits to a crush on him, but there are problems, not least of which is his girlfriend Blaze. David’s a thirtysomething architect who looks great and “can eat a girl into a coma,” but his idea of commitment is a three-day weekend. Nigel is an acid-tongued Brit who owns a trendy restaurant in Malibu but is standoffish and spastic in that annoyingly English way. The only decent man in Elizabeth’s life seems to be her best friend Andrew, who runs an art gallery and warns Elizabeth when she’s flying too close to the flames. Can she start something there? No way. This is Hollywood, after all, where decency marks you as a loser. Elizabeth will have to make the best of a bad hand. Or will she? Slick to the max: after about ten pages, Wolper’s high-testosterone romp begins to sound like Cynthia Heimel on speed.
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1999
ISBN: 1-57322-137-6
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Riverhead
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1999
A kind of Holden Caulfield who speaks bravely and winningly from inside the sorrows of autism: wonderful, simple, easy,...
Britisher Haddon debuts in the adult novel with the bittersweet tale of a 15-year-old autistic who’s also a math genius.
Christopher Boone has had some bad knocks: his mother has died (well, she went to the hospital and never came back), and soon after he found a neighbor’s dog on the front lawn, slain by a garden fork stuck through it. A teacher said that he should write something that he “would like to read himself”—and so he embarks on this book, a murder mystery that will reveal who killed Mrs. Shears’s dog. First off, though, is a night in jail for hitting the policeman who questions him about the dog (the cop made the mistake of grabbing the boy by the arm when he can’t stand to be touched—any more than he can stand the colors yellow or brown, or not knowing what’s going to happen next). Christopher’s father bails him out but forbids his doing any more “detecting” about the dog-murder. When Christopher disobeys (and writes about it in his book), a fight ensues and his father confiscates the book. In time, detective-Christopher finds it, along with certain other clues that reveal a very great deal indeed about his mother’s “death,” his father’s own part in it—and the murder of the dog. Calming himself by doing roots, cubes, prime numbers, and math problems in his head, Christopher runs away, braves a train-ride to London, and finds—his mother. How can this be? Read and see. Neither parent, if truth be told, is the least bit prepossessing or more than a cutout. Christopher, though, with pet rat Toby in his pocket and advanced “maths” in his head, is another matter indeed, and readers will cheer when, way precociously, he takes his A-level maths and does brilliantly.
A kind of Holden Caulfield who speaks bravely and winningly from inside the sorrows of autism: wonderful, simple, easy, moving, and likely to be a smash.Pub Date: June 17, 2003
ISBN: 0-385-50945-6
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2003
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.
Life lessons.
Angie Malone, the youngest of a big, warm Italian-American family, returns to her Pacific Northwest hometown to wrestle with various midlife disappointments: her divorce, Papa’s death, a downturn in business at the family restaurant, and, above all, her childlessness. After several miscarriages, she, a successful ad exec, and husband Conlan, a reporter, befriended a pregnant young girl and planned to adopt her baby—and then the birth mother changed her mind. Angie and Conlan drifted apart and soon found they just didn’t love each other anymore. Metaphorically speaking, “her need for a child had been a high tide, an overwhelming force that drowned them. A year ago, she could have kicked to the surface but not now.” Sadder but wiser, Angie goes to work in the struggling family restaurant, bickering with Mama over updating the menu and replacing the ancient waitress. Soon, Angie befriends another young girl, Lauren Ribido, who’s eager to learn and desperately needs a job. Lauren’s family lives on the wrong side of the tracks, and her mother is a promiscuous alcoholic, but Angie knows nothing of this sad story and welcomes Lauren into the DeSaria family circle. The girl listens in, wide-eyed, as the sisters argue and make wisecracks and—gee-whiz—are actually nice to each other. Nothing at all like her relationship with her sluttish mother, who throws Lauren out when boyfriend David, en route to Stanford, gets her pregnant. Will Lauren, who’s just been accepted to USC, let Angie adopt her baby? Well, a bit of a twist at the end keeps things from becoming too predictable.
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.Pub Date: July 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-345-46750-7
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2004
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