Actress/second-novelist Freud (Hideous Kinky, 1992) returns with a limp tale of an acting student enduring poverty, a shattered family life, and postadolescent sexual confusion in a shabby backwater of modern-day London. Sixteen-year-old Lisa has been accepted into an acting course at a college in London's King's Cross, and her strident mother, Marguerite, and hyperactive younger half-brother, Max, have moved to London with her. Nearly penniless, the three manage to snag a one-bedroom apartment in Peerless Flats, one of London's temporary public-housing blocks, where they will stay until Marguerite can lobby her way into a permanent home. Meanwhile, Lisa hooks up with her older sister, Ruby, already a fully-enculturated Londoner with a heroin habit and a weakness for destructive boyfriends, and watches in awed admiration as Ruby passes in and out of rehab clinics virtually untouched, throws herself into an affair with a boy Lisa likes, and effortlessly teases cash and meals out of the girls' distracted, disappearing dad. Marguerite blames herself for having ruined Ruby with overly strict rules and curfews, and allows Lisa total independence—but listless Lisa has no idea what to do with her freedom, and when not dragging herself to absurdly irrelevant method-acting classes can only tag along as Marguerite attacks the housing authorities, a girlfriend arranges for a weekend of sex and drugs, or a potential boyfriend embarks on a drug-dealing foray. In the end, Marguerite finds a ramshackle house, and Lisa dimly perceives that a solid, predictable future may become possible again—but it's too late for the reader who, imprisoned in Lisa's unfocused, unexamined no-man's-land, has lost all hope of getting out. Sensitive, subtly humorous, and evocative of the underside of London life, but without the depth or resolution of a satisfying novel.
Pub Date: April 1, 1993
ISBN: 0-15-171608-0
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1993
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with...
Talk-show queen takes tumble as millions jeer.
Nora Bridges is a wildly popular radio spokesperson for family-first virtues, but her loyal listeners don't know that she walked out on her husband and teenaged daughters years ago and didn't look back. Now that a former lover has sold racy pix of naked Nora and horny himself to a national tabloid, her estranged daughter Ruby, an unsuccessful stand-up comic in Los Angeles, has been approached to pen a tell-all. Greedy for the fat fee she's been promised, Ruby agrees and heads for the San Juan Islands, eager to get reacquainted with the mom she plans to betray. Once in the family homestead, nasty Ruby alternately sulks and glares at her mother, who is temporarily wheelchair-bound as a result of a post-scandal car crash. Uncaring, Ruby begins writing her side of the story when she's not strolling on the beach with former sweetheart Dean Sloan, the son of wealthy socialites who basically ignored him and his gay brother Eric. Eric, now dying of cancer and also in a wheelchair, has returned to the island. This dismal threesome catch up on old times, recalling their childhood idylls on the island. After Ruby's perfect big sister Caroline shows up, there's another round of heartfelt talk. Nora gradually reveals the truth about her unloving husband and her late father's alcoholism, which led her to seek the approval of others at the cost of her own peace of mind. And so on. Ruby is aghast to discover that she doesn't know everything after all, but Dean offers her subdued comfort. Happy endings await almost everyone—except for readers of this nobly preachy snifflefest.
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with syrupy platitudes about life and love.Pub Date: March 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-609-60737-5
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2001
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
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