As road trips go, nothing to write home about.
A misanthropic rock star on the back end of his career discovers that touring the world’s backwaters isn’t much fun.
Caustic rocker-turned-writer Parker ill-advisedly revives Brian Porker, the semiautobiographical character featured in his story collection, Carp Fishing on Valium (2000). In reduced financial straits, the bile-filled yet compliant Porker undertakes a series of far-flung tours engineered by his ever-baffling manager Tarquin Steed, and a perplex of misadventures develops. In Sweden, Porker is hypnotized by Ba’hai cultists, who believe him to be the reincarnation of their prophet. In Tasmania, his soundman Carruthers purloins a rare wolf-dog, which becomes a prize coveted by a cabal of wealthy sybarites the touring party encounters in Iceland. These three nonsensical, lugubriously developed plot strands come together in a chaotic and pointless finale that returns the principals to the Tasmanian outback. It’s an agonizing odyssey, mainly because Porker isn’t very good company. Parker’s lyrical venom plays well in a three-minute song, but his fictional surrogate grows wearisome over the elongated course of the novel as he rails incessantly against religious zealots, record company toadies, punk bands, guitar and lighting technicians, stewardesses, in-flight bores, attorneys, and anyone else who rubs him the wrong way. The sour, generally humorless tone is only slightly dispelled by some overwrought but occasionally droll descriptions of Porker’s misbegotten gigs in the hinterlands, by Steed’s sleight-of-hand business ploys, and by Carruthers’s bizarre north-of-England patois. The lazily told tale is also marred by indolent editing mistakes sure to put off readers: Though set in 1983–84, there are anachronistic allusions to Sinead O’Connor, the Icelandic band the Sugar Cubes, the drug Ecstasy, and digital recording, all of which came to the fore in the ’90s.
As road trips go, nothing to write home about.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2003
ISBN: 1-56025-549-8
Page Count: 272
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2003
BOOK REVIEW
Above-average formula fiction, making full display of the author’s strong suits: sense of place, compassion for characters...
Female rivalry is again the main preoccupation of Hannah’s latest Pacific Northwest sob saga (Firefly Lane, 2008, etc.).
At Water’s Edge, the family seat overlooking Hood Canal, Vivi Ann, youngest and prettiest of the Grey sisters and a champion horsewoman, has persuaded embittered patriarch Henry to turn the tumbledown ranch into a Western-style equestrian arena. Eldest sister Winona, a respected lawyer in the nearby village of Oyster Shores, hires taciturn ranch hand Dallas Raintree, a half-Native American. Middle sister Aurora, stay-at-home mother of twins, languishes in a dull marriage. Winona, overweight since adolescence, envies Vivi, whose looks get her everything she wants, especially men. Indeed, Winona’s childhood crush Luke recently proposed to Vivi. Despite Aurora’s urging (her principal role is as sisterly referee), Winona won’t tell Vivi she loves Luke. Yearning for Dallas, Vivi stands up Luke to fall into bed with the enigmatic, tattooed cowboy. Winona snitches to Luke: engagement off. Vivi marries Dallas over Henry’s objections. The love-match triumphs, and Dallas, though scarred by child abuse, is an exemplary father to son Noah. One Christmas Eve, the town floozy is raped and murdered. An eyewitness and forensic evidence incriminate Dallas. Winona refuses to represent him, consigning him to the inept services of a public defender. After a guilty verdict, he’s sentenced to life without parole. A decade later, Winona has reached an uneasy truce with Vivi, who’s still pining for Dallas. Noah is a sullen teen, Aurora a brittle but resigned divorcée. Noah learns about the Seattle Innocence Project. Could modern DNA testing methods exonerate Dallas? Will Aunt Winona redeem herself by reopening the case? The outcome, while predictable, is achieved with more suspense and less sentimental histrionics than usual for Hannah.
Above-average formula fiction, making full display of the author’s strong suits: sense of place, compassion for characters and understanding of family dynamics.Pub Date: Feb. 9, 2009
ISBN: 978-0-312-36410-6
Page Count: 400
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2008
As she seeks to repair bridges, Cat awakens anger and treachery in the hearts of those she once betrayed. Making amends,...
Before sobriety, Catherine "Cat" Coombs had it all: fun friends, an exciting job, and a love affair with alcohol. Until she blacked out one more time and woke up in a stranger’s bed.
By that time, “having it all” had already devolved into hiding the extent of her drinking from everyone she cared about, including herself. Luckily for Cat, the stranger turned out to be Jason Halliwell, a rather delicious television director marking three years, eight months, and 69 days of sobriety. Inspired by Jason—or rather, inspired by the prospect of a romantic relationship with this handsome hunk—Cat joins him at AA meetings and embarks on her own journey toward clarity. But sobriety won’t work until Cat commits to it for herself. Their relationship is tumultuous, as Cat falls off the wagon time and again. Along the way, Cat discovers that the cold man she grew up endlessly failing to please was not her real father, and with his death, her mother’s secret escapes. So she heads for Nantucket, where she meets her drunken dad and two half sisters—one boisterously welcoming and the other sulkily suspicious—and where she commits an unforgivable blunder. Years later, despairing of her persistent relapses, Jason has left Cat, taking their daughter with him. Finally, painfully, Cat gets clean. Green (Saving Grace, 2014, etc.) handles grim issues with a sure hand, balancing light romance with tense family drama. She unflinchingly documents Cat’s humiliations under the influence and then traces her commitment to sobriety. Simultaneously masking the motivations of those surrounding our heroine, Green sets up a surprising karmic lesson.
As she seeks to repair bridges, Cat awakens anger and treachery in the hearts of those she once betrayed. Making amends, like addiction, may endanger her future.Pub Date: June 23, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-250-04734-2
Page Count: 320
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: April 1, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2015
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