A whiny, thoroughly Jewish insider kvetch on the hopelessly crass Hollywood of Bruce Wagner, Donald Westlake, and others,...
Not about bugs that sting; instead, a bittersweet first novel from an ex-screenwriter about a Jewish ex-screenwriter in a midlife crisis who can't quite fathom why Hollywood is so Jewish and so vile.
Shortly before turning 40, Frankie Jordan, trying to finish a screenplay, is mired in writer’s block when her supremely successful Academy Award–winner screenwriter (non-Jewish) husband, Hart, decides their childless 13-year marriage isn't working out and dumps her. Frankie—Francine Fingerman before she moved from suburban Long Island to Los Angeles and became Hart's second wife—gets lunch and sympathy from her agent, Freyda. Jonathan Prince, Freyda's new 24-year-old secretary, tells Frankie he saw a movie of the week she wrote ages ago and he's her biggest fan. Frankie, grateful for any kind words, lets Jonathan, a sarcastic, good-looking, good-dressing Jewish kid also from Long Island, charm his way into her life. He helps her move to a cozy apartment owned by Herschel, a struggling playwright, and Miriam, who dotes on her husband because she thinks he's a genius. Miriam and Herschel become Frankie's surrogate parents while Jonathan becomes a surrogate brother, laughing with her at the pretentious, neurotic Jews who dominate the film industry. When her screenplay is sold to a studio and Frankie is hired to revise it (the Jewish producers think the characters are too Jewish), Jonathan serves as her secretary, finagles a promotion, and rapidly transforms himself into a Sammy Glick, sucking up to superiors, stealing story ideas, and harassing restaurant staff. He suddenly has no time for Frankie, who makes peace with her Jewish upbringing and sees in Jonathan the subject for a novel.
A whiny, thoroughly Jewish insider kvetch on the hopelessly crass Hollywood of Bruce Wagner, Donald Westlake, and others, with sharply drawn characters and a quiet compassion for the beasts who run the zoo.Pub Date: May 1, 2000
ISBN: 0-688-17464-7
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2000
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
Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.
Coelho is a Brazilian writer with four books to his credit. Following Diary of a Magus (1992—not reviewed) came this book, published in Brazil in 1988: it's an interdenominational, transcendental, inspirational fable—in other words, a bag of wind.
The story is about a youth empowered to follow his dream. Santiago is an Andalusian shepherd boy who learns through a dream of a treasure in the Egyptian pyramids. An old man, the king of Salem, the first of various spiritual guides, tells the boy that he has discovered his destiny: "to realize one's destiny is a person's only real obligation." So Santiago sells his sheep, sails to Tangier, is tricked out of his money, regains it through hard work, crosses the desert with a caravan, stops at an oasis long enough to fall in love, escapes from warring tribesmen by performing a miracle, reaches the pyramids, and eventually gets both the gold and the girl. Along the way he meets an Englishman who describes the Soul of the World; the desert woman Fatima, who teaches him the Language of the World; and an alchemist who says, "Listen to your heart" A message clings like ivy to every encounter; everyone, but everyone, has to put in their two cents' worth, from the crystal merchant to the camel driver ("concentrate always on the present, you'll be a happy man"). The absence of characterization and overall blandness suggest authorship by a committee of self-improvement pundits—a far cry from Saint- Exupery's The Little Prince: that flagship of the genre was a genuine charmer because it clearly derived from a quirky, individual sensibility.
Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.Pub Date: July 1, 1993
ISBN: 0-06-250217-4
Page Count: 192
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1993
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
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