by Grant Ginder ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 1, 2009
A passable, watery caricature.
Recent college grad tries to navigate the political minefields and glossy nightlife of Washington, D.C.
As a speechwriter for the Center for American Progress, debut novelist Ginder has obviously developed a healthy and fertile suspicion of beltway institutions. Unfortunately his cautionary tale, while laced with contemporary detail and rapid-fire dialogue, is built haphazardly from scenarios worked to death by other writers. It doesn’t help that the book’s blond-coiffed protagonist, flailing Princeton alum Taylor Mark, is whiny even in his best moments. Fleeing his pharmaceutically addled mother, Taylor moves to D.C. at the behest of an old friend, golden boy Chase Latham, who’s sleeping with Taylor’s adorable cousin Annalee. “He’s a drug, really,” Taylor admits. “Grade A, uncut, pure, top of the line. Served up by only the slickest dealers in high-class clubs. Sure, he’s a little dangerous. And yeah, there’s a hangover—mornings and days and nights wondering why and telling yourself it’s not going to happen again.” With Chase’s help, Taylor becomes a legislative aide to earnest Republican Congressman John Grayson, then oscillates between tedious days doing scut work for Grayson’s reptilian staff and late nights stalking “skinterns” through opulent parties with Chase’s glamorous, self-destructive posse. Clearly Taylor has good intentions; he ingratiates himself with the congressman, tries to look after his cousin and pursues a Latina beauty with all the savoir-faire of a puppy dog. But he can’t seem to help screwing it all up. How did everything go so wrong? “Politics, I suppose,” Chase muses between cocktails. Sampling the nihilism of Bret Easton Ellis and the workplace satire of Joshua Ferris, Ginder conveys little more than the sense that we’ve been here before.
A passable, watery caricature.Pub Date: June 1, 2009
ISBN: 978-1-4165-9559-5
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2009
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by Kristin Hannah ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 1, 2006
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
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by J.D. Salinger ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 15, 1951
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
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