Taylor's bizarrely entertaining debut features a young down- and-out waitress whose involvement with an Israeli fugitive, a .357 Magnum, a ditsy busboy, his schizophrenic brother, and a pet rat named Fear can lead only to trouble—an original, witty, giggle- provoking L.A. story. Twenty-year-old J.O. is having trouble keeping her waitress job at the Sun Maiden diner three miles outside of Hollywood. Not only is she always late, but packets of Sweet'N Low keep falling out of their pocket in her shoulder bow, her cap is invariably wrinkled, and she rarely makes it through a shift without mixing up the customers' orders or spilling coffee on someone's dress. Rafi, the Israeli night-manager, suggests she try shooting his .357 Magnum to counterbalance her sense of inadequacy. J.O finds she likes guns, and begins accompanying her boss to the shooting range while the two engage in an increasingly serious affair. Though J.O. suspects that Rafi, with his gun collection and clandestine meetings with eccentric strangers, is probably up to something illegal, she's too distracted by her crazed roommate, a self- dramatizing actress; their landlord, an old man obsessed with creating the Car of the Future; and the search for her long-absent father, which brought J.O. from Manhattan to L.A. in the first place, to pay much attention. In the end, Rafi flees to Israel to avoid the feds, leaving J.O. to struggle alone (and, as it turns out, more or less triumphantly) with her roommate's romantic troubles, her landlord's involvement with loan sharks, a busboy's desire to save his insane brother's life, and the fact that her father, the man responsible for naming her ``Jambalaya Orleans'' back in the early 70's, seems to have forgotten that she exists. Sharp-witted black comedy by a promising 26-year-old novelist.
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1991
ISBN: 0-689-12130-X
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Atheneum
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1991
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
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