A spiky story replete with decadence and yet told with an undeniable, unshakable grace.
Rock ’n’ roll girl figures burning out is much, much better than just fading away.
Long before she was fronting the international rock sensation Anaconda, Lee Annis was a young wife stuck in Vegas, married to a gun-collecting doctor, with a newborn she barely acknowledged. Of course, nobody knows that, though some media wags have posited that the color of her nipples, which can be seen quite clearly on an album cover, prove that she had once had a child. Nowadays, Lee does what she can as a member of the international rock-star jet set to burn out the memory of that existence, along with a windswept, hazily described Montana childhood. Never one for leaving things alone, Lee sleeps with and then tortures herself thinking about what-could-have-been with bandmate Billy, who’s actually with another bandmate, Alessia, but decides eventually to marry a third girl. So, after a brief interlude that gives some unresolved background on the whole Vegas/child thing, Lee spends a good many pages mooning about London and Los Angeles, thinking about Billy and the band’s imminent demise, and being generally, fabulously, self-destructive. Although binging on random, greedy sex, she knows it has to end, and soon: “This cock-to-mouth existence is doing me in.” But Lee is compulsive, if nothing else, stuck in Möbius strip loop of rage, sex, and desire for an unattainable peaceful existence (which, if she was ever given, she’d most likely toss over in a second). The only things sustaining her are the “analgesics of sex and drugs and shopping” and the near-volcanic upwellings of heartache that keep propelling her forward into the void. Irish second-novelist Collins (Cannibals, 2003) lets Lee tell her story in all its dark star fury, just swan-diving into her mangled psyche and not trying to shoehorn it into the typical rise-and-decline rock-star/addict narrative.
A spiky story replete with decadence and yet told with an undeniable, unshakable grace.Pub Date: May 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-224-06927-6
Page Count: 250
Publisher: Jonathan Cape/Trafalgar
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2004
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
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
