If those who devour such novels are willing to laugh at them, Elliott might be a bigger hit on bookshelves than he’s been...
The mysteries of history—and the rash of bestselling novels they’ve spawned—inspire this slapstick satire that is more fun than the sum of its clichés.
While less literary than Steve Martin, comedian-actor-writer Elliott (star of TV’s Get a Life and the film Cabin Boy) offers more than the recycled monologue bits of most comedians-turned-authors. The patron saint of Elliott’s satiric sensibility here might well be Mel Brooks, for Elliott shows the same sort of gleeful relish in skewering the absurdities of the historical crime thriller genre that Brooks has in his big-screen parodies. After reading Elliott’s account of New York’s little-known 19th-century serial killer—Jack the Jolly Thwacker—it will be all the tougher to swallow the quasi-historical tone of The Historian, The Alienist, even The Da Vinci Code without gagging. Among those involved in the pursuit of Jolly Jack, who disembowels prostitutes after “thwacking” them, are a reporter named Liz Smith, a pre-presidential, genitally pierced and relentlessly flatulent Teddy Roosevelt and the time-traveling author himself. Along the way, they encounter the nefarious (and lisping) Boss Tweed, the mysterious Mummers and a marauding street gang of toddlers. The narrative leaps between present and past, with the author alternating between advancing the plot and addressing the reader, reinforcing his persona as a hapless buffoon in the process. The more convoluted the conspiracy surrounding the serial murders becomes, the more absurd the contrivances of this sort of historical fiction seem: According to 19th-century history as rewritten by Elliott, a history in which a calculating Yoko Ono and a perennially wrinkled Don Imus play roles, it was New York that actually sparked the Great Chicago Fire.
If those who devour such novels are willing to laugh at them, Elliott might be a bigger hit on bookshelves than he’s been onscreen.Pub Date: Oct. 5, 2005
ISBN: 1-4013-5245-6
Page Count: 368
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2005
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
APPRECIATIONS
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
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