The veteran sportswriter rounds up his gang from Semi-Tough (1972) and Life on Its Ownself (1984) for a crassly funny, cynical, but ultimately endearing nod at professional football. This time out, former New York Giants Superbowl winner Billy Clyde Puckett puts together his very own NFL team and takes them to the Superbowl. Jenkins’s latest roman-Ö-clef is really about growing old. Back in his hometown of Fort Worth, where men are men (unless they’re gay “shirtlifters”) and where women are “rack-loaded wool drivers” (unless they’re “mature”), Puckett defiantly smokes Marlboros and knocks back on the booze in a woebegone little bar called He’s Not Here, as he contemplates football’s pointless afterlife. Most people no longer recognize him; he’s bored with giving motivational speeches to CEOs; and his stint as a TV sports commentator was too silly to endure. Now his wife, sexpot movie star Barbara Jane Bookman, has gone to Switzerland to film a stupid movie directed by Billy Clyde’s best friend, Shake Tiller; T.J. Lambert, here a college football coach, is stoically bailing his brainless players out of jail; and sportswriter buddy Jim Tom Pinch is still picking up young bimbos. But just as Puckett’s bleary eyes are beginning to wander toward the —mature— silhouette of bartender Kelly Sue Woodley, Puckett’s billionaire “bidnessman” father-in-law Big Ed Bookman gives him a blank check so he can find a town (code-name: Big Food), build a stadium, sign up players, and otherwise invent the West Texas Tornadoes. Puckett goes at the task over infinite quantities of booze and food. But despite false starts, phony injuries, bad calls, and dumb fumbles, the West Texas Tornadoes make it to the Superbowl, where they prove that winning is a matter of making the best of what little you can call yours. A coarse mix of good ol’ boy put-downs, below-the-belt slurs, sports gossip, and aw-shucks sentimentality can’t mask the sadness in this tale of men building monuments to their former glory. (Author tour)
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1998
ISBN: 0-385-47000-2
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1998
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
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
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