by Henry Sutton ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 1, 2006
Defiantly bawdy, but ultimately hollow.
Where have you gone, Margaret Thatcher? A randy Britain turns its eyes to you.
Charlie is getting old—he’s about to celebrate his 70th birthday—but he’s not dead yet, not with Viagra around. (And damn the doctors who say he can’t take it because of his failing ticker.) His wife, Dorothy, stoically accepts the sexual drive the little blue pill generates in her husband, but then she’s stoic in general—so much so that she can even tolerate Charlie’s long-time mistress, Janet. Vignettes about each of Charlie’s four daughters—two with Dorothy, two with Janet—drive the latest novel by Sutton (Kid’s Stuff, 2005), who seems to believe that the conscience of a country would be obvious if only we better understood its underwear-shopping habits. Each woman is framed around her busted relationships, choice in panties and sexual need: Catherine’s a mother of three who sleeps around and resents her ex-husband’s rejection of her for another man; Zara can’t decide if she should dump her boyfriend (he can barely speak English, but he’s great in the sack); Sally satisfies herself with a garden hose; and Alicia is turned off by her boyfriend Mikey’s trips to a strip club, but ashamed of her own dalliance with a fellow teacher. Willfully pulpy, porny and junky, this novel has a few moments in which the characters’ wanton lusts make for some smart, revealing comedy—Janet’s hunt for a vibrator becomes a taut essay on divorce, motherhood and the world of retail. But mostly Sutton is a writer of little nuance whose attitude toward the people he invents borders on contempt—he captures these men and women at their most embarrassed and intimate, not just to expose them for the insecure, needy people they are, but to mock them for it. Does he mean to say that these people are sad victims of a culture that insists they fit a certain model of sexiness, or is he just taking whacks at them? The author seems unaware that there’s a distinction.
Defiantly bawdy, but ultimately hollow.Pub Date: July 1, 2006
ISBN: 1-85242-894-5
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Serpent’s Tail
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2006
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by Henry Sutton
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by Henry Sutton
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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SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
APPRECIATIONS
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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