The most original admissions essay seen since Legally Blonde.
A 14-year old pens a premature and very precocious admissions essay in Levangie’s quirky latest (The After Wife, 2012, etc.).
Perry Gonzales, daughter of “the estimable Yelena Maria Gonzales, R.N.” a hardworking single mother, is tendering her application to Bennington College, four years early. This scholarship student, who commutes from rough North Hollywood to the exclusive Mark Frost Academy in Beverly Hills, is already anticipating her future as a writer, a career that can only be advanced by attending the same Vermont college that produced Bret Easton Ellis and Donna Tartt. Her personal essay, as such essays must, demonstrates community service and extracurricular components: in Perry’s case, her thriving small business tutoring her privileged, spoiled and tragically flawed Mark Frost classmates. Each of the seven tutoring assignments she details is a mini-allegory about a deadly sin, complete with illustrations (not seen.) Lust involves the cossetted daughter whose birthday wish, a backyard concert by the boy band du jour, has unexpected consequences for her neglected, studious brother. Two of the anecdotes, Wrath and Greed, detail unorthodox, some would say criminal, methods for coping with sociopathic children. In Gluttony and Sloth, respectively, an obese student whose hunger literally knows no bounds and a video gamer whose body has atrophied except in those areas required for his all-consuming pastime suffer symbolic retribution for their excesses. As her “essay” ticks off the transgressions, some facts about Perry herself begin to emerge: She is academically gifted but humbly diligent, ever grateful and respectful toward her mother, and, where a handsome quarterback (in Pride) is concerned, as vulnerable as her airheaded Mark Frost schoolmates. As her own treatise about sin conclusively shows, it is possible to be too rich, but could Perry be too good? Although at first blush this “cautionary tale” mimics a YA novel in the Gossip Girls vein, Levangie’s conceit works on an adult level mainly due to the fact that it’s economical—too much elaboration would weigh down what is essentially a collection of frothy shaggy dog jokes.
The most original admissions essay seen since Legally Blonde.Pub Date: Oct. 17, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-399-16673-0
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Blue Rider Press
Review Posted Online: Aug. 17, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2013
BOOK REVIEW
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
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
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