As with Barris’s shows, readers might find themselves laughing despite their better instincts.
Though the novel plainly isn’t this notorious television producer’s strong suit, there’s some guilty pleasure in reading about how the man responsible for The Gong Show and The Newlywed Game takes his revenge on reality TV.
It’s the year 2011, and trash TV has gotten a whole lot trashier. There are new limits—or perhaps no limits. Barris (Confessions of a Dangerous Mind, 1984, etc.) jumpstarts his narrative with an encounter on the Manhattan streets between a very (or at least formerly) famous television producer and an 82-year-old cripple who makes a grab for him. The producer is never named, though details invite the reader initially to equate his experiences and mindset with those of Barris. In fact, the cripple has a name: Chuck Barris. He’s impoverished and all but deaf, plainly a pest to the producer, who does his best to shake him off, but the geezer has an idea for what will be his TV comeback. He even shot a pilot for it, back in his heyday, when standards weren’t nearly as liberal. Eventually, he prevails upon the producer to visit the cripple’s squalor and view the tape of a show titled The Death Game. Instead of merely humiliating contestants, a tactic Barris had pioneered, the new show offers the ultimate challenge to those who make it to the hot seat. Answer the final question correctly, and you win 100 million bucks. Answer incorrectly, and you’re executed. Interspersed with the program’s progression are the stories of those who might become contestants. Some are heartsick, some are head-sick and many have seen their lives take surprising detours. Which characters are either sick enough of life or desperate enough for cash—or both—to risk everything? It’s not a pretty question, nor a pretty answer.
As with Barris’s shows, readers might find themselves laughing despite their better instincts.Pub Date: May 1, 2007
ISBN: 1-4165-3525-X
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2007
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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