A dark, laugh-track-ready take on deceptively light fare.
Spanning from one Emmy season to the next, Hunter’s slim black comedy follows the production cycle of a farcical take on television history from the perspectives of three key players.
Erin Greer, the brilliant but bored and often neurotic comedienne and head of $our Dough Productions, is a perennial Emmy winner, but all the accolades can’t relieve her of an overwhelming aversion to trite sitcom tropes. Enter Zach Shelby, a once-celebrated sitcom writer now working alongside Madam Sun, proprietress of a laundry and dry cleaners. Shelby’s cynical view of the TV industry may be just what Greer needs to jump-start her next big project—a dark reprisal of the great ladies of sitcom (think older and embittered versions of Lucy, Jeannie and Samantha). But Shelby won’t have a chance of becoming part of the project if Greer’s obsessive assistant, Francesca Golden, has anything to say about it. Long accustomed to Greer’s abuses and idiosyncrasies, Francesca is determined to finally have the comedienne all to herself, but that doesn’t mean Francesca’s immune to Shelby’s unassuming sex appeal. One way or another, everybody ends up at Madam Sun’s, but far from providing clear guidance, the enigmatic laundress complicates the plot with some old secrets of her own. By turns hilarious and heartfelt, this short novel provides an insider’s view of the angst and animosity hiding beneath the veneer of popular comedy. Hunter’s short chapters call to mind the episodic nature of television programming, and as with many shows, some episodes are better than others. The early chapters suffer from a surfeit of exposition that eventually segues to a surprisingly complex, character-driven story arc. By the end, fortunes change for better or worse, and some of television’s greatest comedic legacies will never be the same.
A dark, laugh-track-ready take on deceptively light fare.Pub Date: Aug. 12, 2013
ISBN: 978-1482732627
Page Count: 176
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Oct. 31, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2013
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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