Wonderful characters elbow each other for room on a crowded stage. It’s a bit like a sunnier Bruce Wagner, but newcomer...
A gifted public relations practitioner’s black arts are fouled by his own pesky humanity.
Scott Singer has sailed willingly into the perfect p.r. storm. Fresh from a qualified triumph involving the use of naked but sincere feminists to rescue the image of a lavish but languishing resort, the lanky, loveless 35-year-old has accepted a truly daunting challenge. Gifted, unfairly handsome, philandering rap artist Hunta, né Jeremy Sharpe, would be on top of the recording scene were it not for the recent school shooting for which the musical and dramatic theme was Hunta's hit Bitch Fiend. It’s not just that the cultural police are waiting to throw him in chains. Lisa Glassman, the uncredited co-author of one of his best recordings, is about to charge him with rape. For all his gangsta posing (he was present at Tupac’s shooting), Hunta is a pretty straight guy trying to live up to his father's tough standards without losing his badass credentials. But neither the press nor the public will remember his softer side when the rape charge comes out. Working with p.r. legend and African-American specialist Maxina Howard, Scott proposes deployment of a deflatable rape charge from another quarter to preempt Lisa’s accusation. But Harmony Prince, the woman he picks to cry wolf, presents her own set of problems. Her wretched ghetto past has left her so emotionally vulnerable that Scott’s may finish her off. Worse, as he is falling a little bit in love with the brilliant, deaf mother of his 13-yer-old assistant, Scott is also falling a little bit in love with Harmony. The brilliant but doomed plan starts to collapse on Larry King Live when Hunta’s long-suffering wife Simba phones in just as Harmony is telling all.
Wonderful characters elbow each other for room on a crowded stage. It’s a bit like a sunnier Bruce Wagner, but newcomer Price is his own man.Pub Date: Aug. 31, 2004
ISBN: 1-4000-6234-9
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Villard
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2004
BOOK REVIEW
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
Soft-focus story moves right along with few surprises. This time around, Hannah avoids the soap-opera complications of her...
Another middle-aged mom in a muddle.
After years of false starts and big hopes, Elizabeth’s ruggedly handsome husband Jack, a former football star, just landed a spot as a sportscaster on national news. He still loves her, even though much younger women are giving him come-hither looks. Heck, he doesn’t want to betray the love of his life after she helped him kick drugs and stuck by him even when he was a struggling has-been. And won’t it seem hypocritical if he fools around with his sexy assistant while he does in-depth reporting on a rape case involving a famous basketball center? Well, he fools around anyway. Elizabeth, nicknamed Birdie, knows nothing of this, but she withdraws from Jack when her hard-drinking, salt-of-the-earth father has a stroke and dies. Now no one will call her “sugar beet” ever again. Time to return home to Tennessee and contend with Anita, the sort-of-evil stepmother so trashy she wears pink puffy slippers all day long. Naturally, it turns out that Anita actually has a heart of gold and knows a few things about Birdie’s dead mother that were hushed up for years. Mom was an artist, just like Birdie, and an old scandal comes to light as Anita unrolls a vibrant canvas that portrays her secret lover. Perhaps, Birdie muses, her mother died of heartbreak, never having followed her true love or developed her talent. Has she, too, compromised everything she holds dear? Hoping to find out, Birdie joins a support group that promises to reconnect confused women with their passion. She and Jack separate, prompting a how-dare-you fit from their grown daughters. Will Birdie fly her empty nest? Will she go back to college for a degree in art? Will her brooding watercolors ever sell?
Soft-focus story moves right along with few surprises. This time around, Hannah avoids the soap-opera complications of her previous tales (Summer Island, 2001, etc.).Pub Date: July 1, 2002
ISBN: 0-345-45071-X
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2002
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