Evokes the heart and soul of the era with a balance of decadence and desperation.
Inglish’s whirlwind novel follows a washed-up rocker and a fledgling model struggling to balance the excesses of superstardom.
Kurt Franklin, the hero of Inglish’s superbly frenzied fiction set in 1980s Los Angeles and New York, has seen better days. A musician and compulsive groomer, he’s been placed on psychiatric disability by his physician, who prescribed him Mellaril, a “thought suppressant.” Even worse, Kurt’s wife, Priscilla, has announced she needs some time apart. His brother James appears with a proposition: Give up drugs and pray, and Kurt just might get his life back. Inglish then spins his narrative toward Sophie Clark, an eighth grader and an aspiring model for sleazy agency owner Giuseppe Cassavetes, who disingenuously whisks her off to his Jamaican compound for a crash course in sex and life. Meanwhile, his prayers answered almost overnight, Kurt preps his new band, Thunderstick, for skyrocketing success, with album releases, groupies and an influential management team ushering in their exploding fame. Sophie’s young life as a model becomes complicated with a rape and an STD, yet she craves stardom and will do whatever it takes to get it. After European runway work provides money, fame and drugs, she meets and begins dating Kurt’s brother, and both plots artfully converge into a blur of rock gigs, sex and expository melodrama—all depicted with pitch-perfect clarity, as if Inglish had actually lived through it all. The author expertly keeps both plots in motion, issuing a hard-knocks education for Kurt and Sophie as their stars ascend; hubris consumes them, and by decade’s end, they crash and burn but come back again as Priscilla returns with a vengeance. It’s a fun ride for them and vicariously thrilling for readers. Demonstrating a knack for authentic period detail (early in her career, Sophie poses for a photo shoot in a sleeveless neon T-shirt, fishnets and combat boots), Inglish compellingly portrays Sophie’s topsy-turvy model lifestyle and Kurt’s stressed-out rocker world, propelling the novel ever further into a cyclone of fashion and bass guitar riffs.
Evokes the heart and soul of the era with a balance of decadence and desperation.Pub Date: March 7, 2014
ISBN: 978-0615790817
Page Count: 434
Publisher: Horton Bay Books
Review Posted Online: June 5, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2014
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
© 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.
