by Christopher Easton ‧ RELEASE DATE: April 29, 2022
While this Hollywood account delivers plenty of raucous debauchery, the humor sometimes overwhelms the story.
A faux autobiography focuses on Hollywood’s queen of crass—Aida Libido, the salacious star of song, stage, and screen.
Aida was born with platinum blond hair; her first words were “Hello Sailor”; and puberty hit when she was only 4 years old. The “hyper-flexible, over-developed pre-adolescent with no gag reflex” became a dancer, contortionist, and prolific sword swallower who would quickly abandon the sideshow and board a Greyhound for Hollywood. The Tinseltown waiting for her was not quite the one that most readers know—sure, the money trench was just as shallow and casting couches abounded, but this Los Angeles was the once-thought-impossible love child of John Waters and Anna Nicole Smith, a place where Aida’s bountiful assets opened doors wide. After a short detour sharing an apartment with a lascivious, underwear-stealing hustler named Meryl Streep, Aida landed the lead in Steven Spielberg’s “tour de force” Beach Blanket Bimbo and won an Oscar. What followed was everything she could have ever wanted—two Grammys, a Tony, a relaxing stint in White slavery, and true love with her third husband, a dashing Latin count. But when he turned murderous—and worse, willing to ally himself with Streep to destroy her—Aida found herself at a fantastical rock bottom in LA’s secret, orgiastic, mildly Satanic celebrity theme park of perversion known as Jizzneyland. Easton, who performs the role of Aida on stage, brings the outrageous yet conversational conventions of drag onto the printed page, not just spilling the tea, but also its vodka chaser. Real-life torrid tales of the rich and famous blur together with Aida’s own experiences, with the garrulous narrator sometimes having to work quite hard to make sure the truth isn’t stranger than the fiction. But the book suffers from the law of diminishing returns—Aida’s charm is in the constantly shocking things she says, but these observations come so hard and fast that after constant zingers about racial stereotypes and Streep’s inhuman promiscuity and more blowjob jokes than most readers can stomach, the audience will find that it’s easy to become numb. As the biting wit and political incorrectness begin to lose their impact, the tale reveals itself as mostly a long setup for recurring punchlines.
While this Hollywood account delivers plenty of raucous debauchery, the humor sometimes overwhelms the story.Pub Date: April 29, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-73779-393-9
Page Count: 246
Publisher: Demimonde
Review Posted Online: May 12, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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by Kristin Hannah ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 6, 2024
A dramatic, vividly detailed reconstruction of a little-known aspect of the Vietnam War.
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A young woman’s experience as a nurse in Vietnam casts a deep shadow over her life.
When we learn that the farewell party in the opening scene is for Frances “Frankie” McGrath’s older brother—“a golden boy, a wild child who could make the hardest heart soften”—who is leaving to serve in Vietnam in 1966, we feel pretty certain that poor Finley McGrath is marked for death. Still, it’s a surprise when the fateful doorbell rings less than 20 pages later. His death inspires his sister to enlist as an Army nurse, and this turn of events is just the beginning of a roller coaster of a plot that’s impressive and engrossing if at times a bit formulaic. Hannah renders the experiences of the young women who served in Vietnam in all-encompassing detail. The first half of the book, set in gore-drenched hospital wards, mildewed dorm rooms, and boozy officers’ clubs, is an exciting read, tracking the transformation of virginal, uptight Frankie into a crack surgical nurse and woman of the world. Her tensely platonic romance with a married surgeon ends when his broken, unbreathing body is airlifted out by helicopter; she throws her pent-up passion into a wild affair with a soldier who happens to be her dead brother’s best friend. In the second part of the book, after the war, Frankie seems to experience every possible bad break. A drawback of the story is that none of the secondary characters in her life are fully three-dimensional: Her dismissive, chauvinistic father and tight-lipped, pill-popping mother, her fellow nurses, and her various love interests are more plot devices than people. You’ll wish you could have gone to Vegas and placed a bet on the ending—while it’s against all the odds, you’ll see it coming from a mile away.
A dramatic, vividly detailed reconstruction of a little-known aspect of the Vietnam War.Pub Date: Feb. 6, 2024
ISBN: 9781250178633
Page Count: 480
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Nov. 4, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2023
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by Liz Moore ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 2, 2024
"Don't go into the woods" takes on unsettling new meaning in Moore's blend of domestic drama and crime novel.
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Many years after her older brother, Bear, went missing, Barbara Van Laar vanishes from the same sleepaway camp he did, leading to dark, bitter truths about her wealthy family.
One morning in 1975 at Camp Emerson—an Adirondacks summer camp owned by her family—it's discovered that 13-year-old Barbara isn't in her bed. A problem case whose unhappily married parents disdain her goth appearance and "stormy" temperament, Barbara is secretly known by one bunkmate to have slipped out every night after bedtime. But no one has a clue where's she permanently disappeared to, firing speculation that she was taken by a local serial killer known as Slitter. As Jacob Sluiter, he was convicted of 11 murders in the 1960s and recently broke out of prison. He's the one, people say, who should have been prosecuted for Bear's abduction, not a gardener who was framed. Leave it to the young and unproven assistant investigator, Judy Luptack, to press forward in uncovering the truth, unswayed by her bullying father and male colleagues who question whether women are "cut out for this work." An unsavory group portrait of the Van Laars emerges in which the children's father cruelly abuses their submissive mother, who is so traumatized by the loss of Bear—and the possible role she played in it—that she has no love left for her daughter. Picking up on the themes of families in search of themselves she explored in Long Bright River (2020), Moore draws sympathy to characters who have been subjected to spousal, parental, psychological, and physical abuse. As rich in background detail and secondary mysteries as it is, this ever-expansive, intricate, emotionally engaging novel never seems overplotted. Every piece falls skillfully into place and every character, major and minor, leaves an imprint.
"Don't go into the woods" takes on unsettling new meaning in Moore's blend of domestic drama and crime novel.Pub Date: July 2, 2024
ISBN: 9780593418918
Page Count: 496
Publisher: Riverhead
Review Posted Online: April 13, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2024
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