In a kind of Parisian Evelyn Waugh with sex, de Rhodes manages to create a Gallic universe of Bright Young Things set loose...
In a madcap romp through the back alleys of Paris, de Rhodes (pen name of Dan Rhodes: Timoleon Vieta Come Home, 2003, etc.) introduces us to a slacker bohemian who may have killed Princess Diana.
Veronique is a 22-year-old photographer trying to make it as an artist while living in the suburbs and working at a boring office full of commuting zombies. Her insufferable boyfriend, Jean-Pierre, writes film reviews for an obscure magazine and composes experimental music so bad that even Veronique won’t listen to it. The day after Veronique finally worked up the nerve to throw Jean-Pierre over, she wakes up late to learn that the Princess of Wales has died in a car crash in the Pont d’Alma—and that the white Fiat that Veronique drove home from Jean-Pierre’s has a smashed-up hood. Observers recalled seeing a mysterious white Fiat cut in front of the Princess’s limousine just before the crash, and Veronique’s last conscious memory of the night before was driving her Fiat slowly and deliberately into the Pont d’Alma on her way home. Did she kill the Princess of Wales! Veronique keeps a cool head and calls her best friend, Estelle, who advises her to break into Jean-Pierre’s apartment and steal his stereo so she can sell it and get money to repair the car before the gendarmes come calling. Veronique makes arrangements. By the time she has the money, though, every auto-shop in France has been warned about smashed-up white Fiats, so Veronique sleeps with the would-be mechanic and tells him to forget she ever called. Jean-Pierre turns out to be quite understanding about his stereo, so she sleeps with him, too. This may be her best move, because he turns out to know some East European sculptors who specialize in car art.
In a kind of Parisian Evelyn Waugh with sex, de Rhodes manages to create a Gallic universe of Bright Young Things set loose upon the world. Vive la différence!Pub Date: Sept. 16, 2004
ISBN: 1-84195-289-2
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Canongate
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2004
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
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
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