Novelist, essayist, and playwright Indiana (Rent Boy, 1994; Gone Tomorrow, 1993, etc.) brings together the insane events and natural disasters of our day in a novel that's most emphatically not a roman Ö clef but a fiction in which real life serves as ``honorary ballast for an entirely speculative'' narrative. The subject is death, Los Angelesstyle, and at story's center is the ongoing murder trial of two brothers who are accused of shooting their parents to death in what prosecutors claim was cold- blooded murder for inheritance, and what the defense claims was a preemptive strike against a sexually abusive father and his enabling wife. Sound familiar? Transcripts of the trial punctuate Indiana's larger narrative, which mainly follows the experiences of Seth, a gay East Coast journalist on assignment to cover the high- profile courtroom antics. Panoramic in scope, with all the sub- stories loosely linked, this pansexual melodrama seems to suggest that we're all killers in one fashion or another, and that father- son incest is at the root of much maladjusted behavior. Indiana waxes ironic about a wide range of types, from the presiding judge's secret life as a stalker to a taxi driver with AIDS whose affair with some rough trade is far more dangerous than he realizes. There's also the son of the washed-up soap star, who casually kills male tricks; the key trial witness with a bad case of Tourette's; and an overweight housewife who hopes to leave her husband for one of the brothers. Seth finds that violent dreams and tacky realities are hopelessly intertwined in California. Indiana's wickedest cuts, though, are reserved for the minor players, especially the on-target jabs at characters who resemble Dominick Dunne, Kathy Acker, and Jamaica Kincaid, to name a few. The clever parts never add up to a convincing whole here, just lots of trite (if acidic) riffs on our peculiarly skewed culture. (Author tour)
Pub Date: July 1, 1997
ISBN: 0-385-48429-1
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 1997
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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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