A cross between chick-lit fare and Bridesmaids.
Bawdy, occasionally lewd and often funny, this follow-up to Jennifer Johnson is Sick of Being Single (2009) returns us to the screwball adventures of a likable screw-up.
Jennifer has landed her man, handsome Brad Keller, heir to a Midwestern department store. The novel opens as the happy couple leaves for their honeymoon on St. Johns, where everything goes wrong. Flight delays, luggage lost and food poisoning, all in the first 24 hours, set the tone for the rest of their marriage. When they arrive home in Minnesota, Ma and Pa Keller have a surprise for the young couple—they bought them the McMansion right next door—and Mother Keller has thoughtfully decorated the whole thing in pastels and ceramic figurines. She also hired them a maid, Bi’ch, an elderly Hmong woman who lives in the guesthouse with her entire extended family. Jennifer is livid, Brad could care less, but in the end, how could she turn down a $3 million lakefront home? Then, Brad breaks the news: He and his sister, Sarah, are to compete to inherit Keller’s when their father retires. Brad and Jennifer must become the perfect church-attending, Republican-voting, golf-playing, pastel-wearing (Jennifer only) couple. With the help of her best friend, Christopher, Jennifer (a once aspiring writer, sweatshirt-wearing Everywoman) is transformed into someone who could’ve starred on Dynasty. Alas, everything always goes wrong (for a variety of reasons, not least of which is sabotage at the hands of the evil Mother Keller). Dinner guests are poisoned, bodily fluids run rampant and her $10,000 refrigerator won’t stop belittling her in Japanese. And to top it off, she and Brad don’t seem to love each other anymore, if they ever did. Next up: Operation Break the Prenup. Some of McElhatton’s conventions—the gay best friend, the endless shopping and makeover scenes—are happily redeemed by her wicked sense of slapstick comedy.
A cross between chick-lit fare and Bridesmaids.Pub Date: Oct. 9, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-06-206439-4
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Morrow/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Sept. 1, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2012
BOOK REVIEW
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
Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.
Coelho is a Brazilian writer with four books to his credit. Following Diary of a Magus (1992—not reviewed) came this book, published in Brazil in 1988: it's an interdenominational, transcendental, inspirational fable—in other words, a bag of wind.
The story is about a youth empowered to follow his dream. Santiago is an Andalusian shepherd boy who learns through a dream of a treasure in the Egyptian pyramids. An old man, the king of Salem, the first of various spiritual guides, tells the boy that he has discovered his destiny: "to realize one's destiny is a person's only real obligation." So Santiago sells his sheep, sails to Tangier, is tricked out of his money, regains it through hard work, crosses the desert with a caravan, stops at an oasis long enough to fall in love, escapes from warring tribesmen by performing a miracle, reaches the pyramids, and eventually gets both the gold and the girl. Along the way he meets an Englishman who describes the Soul of the World; the desert woman Fatima, who teaches him the Language of the World; and an alchemist who says, "Listen to your heart" A message clings like ivy to every encounter; everyone, but everyone, has to put in their two cents' worth, from the crystal merchant to the camel driver ("concentrate always on the present, you'll be a happy man"). The absence of characterization and overall blandness suggest authorship by a committee of self-improvement pundits—a far cry from Saint- Exupery's The Little Prince: that flagship of the genre was a genuine charmer because it clearly derived from a quirky, individual sensibility.
Coelho's placebo has racked up impressive sales in Brazil and Europe. Americans should flock to it like gulls.Pub Date: July 1, 1993
ISBN: 0-06-250217-4
Page Count: 192
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1993
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
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