A decorously risqué update of Lucky Jim with a climax out of The Big Clock.
A sweetly amusing fairy tale about all the nice things that happen to a college teacher who anonymously publishes a dirty book.
Once upon a time, in the California town of Seven Hills, there lived an assistant professor named Ezra Gordon who was such a sad sack that when he and his old college friend Isaac Schwimmer met a pair of ladies at a restaurant, Ike’s pickup invited him to bed, and Ezra’s sold him insurance. But all that changes once Ike, a publisher of adult fiction who couldn’t agree more with Ezra’s perception that he’s on a downward slope, offers him a contract. Even before Ezra’s begun work, pinups start coming onto him—one of them, Ike’s neighbor Tessa Miles, inspiring delirious chapters in his burgeoning opus—and when he returns to the depths of Beuhler College, you’d think he was wearing seven-league boots. His old girlfriend Carol Dimsdale, Beuhler counsel and daughter of the fearsome Baptist college chaplain, apologizes for her chronic coldness; dazzling Tessa follows him from L.A. into his classroom to strike awe into the hearts of his students, attract propositions from Ezra’s colleagues, and evoke an even more forthright reaction from Ezra; and both women offer the still-passive lady-killer their undying loyalty while asking nothing in return. (No word on how his winning attitude affects Ezra’s weight or complexion.) When Every Inch a Lady, by one E.A. Peau, is published, rocketing to the top of Amazon.com’s charts and garnering praise from John Updike, Ike begs for a sequel. Some clouds arise when Peau is traced to Beuhler, but fans of the Brothers Grimm will recognize these travails as only a final testing ground for the plucky, vacuous hero.
A decorously risqué update of Lucky Jim with a climax out of The Big Clock. Tarloff (Face-Time, 1999) by-passes the normal pleasures of fiction to focus entirely on chastely high-concept fantasy.Pub Date: May 1, 2000
ISBN: 0-609-60468-6
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2000
BOOK REVIEW
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
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
APPRECIATIONS
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