A sardonic, fun take on big-time college football, where booster money plays first-team offense.
Majors (The Millionaires, 2009, etc.) goes comic on football when he follows graduate assistant Raymond Love, scratching for a coaching slot at a big-time SEC program, as he is assigned to drive for Coach Woody during the university’s annual Pigskin Cavalcade.
A top-notch small-college quarterback, Raymond grabbed a big-time SEC (think, Crimson Tide) graduate position, but he’s mostly an errand boy. Raymond stays on tiptoes when dynamic head coach, Von Driver, glad-hands through the locker room. Now Von Driver has assigned him to baby-sit Woody, the popular, talented, but eccentric assistant coach. Out among the boosters, Woody needs a keeper, something Raymond comprehends after he arrives at Woody’s house at midnight to find the old man sprawled on the floor in his bathrobe crying over Del Monaco’s operatic rendition of Othello. A Doberman is comforting Woody by licking his head, and the kitchen is equipped with a bottle of George Dickel whisky. Laugh-out-loud comedy populates the narrative, but the story’s essence evolves from the raunch and roll of Semi-Tough into a test of Raymond’s character. That’s on and off the field, for women are involved. In his spare time, Raymond has joined a book club, primarily to pursue the charming Brooke. Only later does he learn the beauty is the school athletic director’s daughter. There’s also Raymond’s good friend on campus, Julie, a grad student employee of the football office with a lawyer-to-be fiance in Washington. Woody is beloved, with goodwill in the bank, but on the calvacade, his love for the game’s purity means he cannot tolerate flunky treatment from a drunken, moneybags booster. A nose is punched. Jobs are lost. Raymond must choose between honor and ambition. Good lessons all, but Majors’ talent shines through his characters—Raymond, amiable, introspective; Woody, the lovable-crazy-amiable uncle; Von Driver, the archetype; TNT, who puts fanatic in the fan; and Barbara Driver, coach’s wife and ideal dinner companion on the rubber-chicken circuit.
A sardonic, fun take on big-time college football, where booster money plays first-team offense.Pub Date: Aug. 27, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-393-06280-9
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Norton
Review Posted Online: Aug. 2, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2012
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
Soft-focus story moves right along with few surprises. This time around, Hannah avoids the soap-opera complications of her...
Another middle-aged mom in a muddle.
After years of false starts and big hopes, Elizabeth’s ruggedly handsome husband Jack, a former football star, just landed a spot as a sportscaster on national news. He still loves her, even though much younger women are giving him come-hither looks. Heck, he doesn’t want to betray the love of his life after she helped him kick drugs and stuck by him even when he was a struggling has-been. And won’t it seem hypocritical if he fools around with his sexy assistant while he does in-depth reporting on a rape case involving a famous basketball center? Well, he fools around anyway. Elizabeth, nicknamed Birdie, knows nothing of this, but she withdraws from Jack when her hard-drinking, salt-of-the-earth father has a stroke and dies. Now no one will call her “sugar beet” ever again. Time to return home to Tennessee and contend with Anita, the sort-of-evil stepmother so trashy she wears pink puffy slippers all day long. Naturally, it turns out that Anita actually has a heart of gold and knows a few things about Birdie’s dead mother that were hushed up for years. Mom was an artist, just like Birdie, and an old scandal comes to light as Anita unrolls a vibrant canvas that portrays her secret lover. Perhaps, Birdie muses, her mother died of heartbreak, never having followed her true love or developed her talent. Has she, too, compromised everything she holds dear? Hoping to find out, Birdie joins a support group that promises to reconnect confused women with their passion. She and Jack separate, prompting a how-dare-you fit from their grown daughters. Will Birdie fly her empty nest? Will she go back to college for a degree in art? Will her brooding watercolors ever sell?
Soft-focus story moves right along with few surprises. This time around, Hannah avoids the soap-opera complications of her previous tales (Summer Island, 2001, etc.).Pub Date: July 1, 2002
ISBN: 0-345-45071-X
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2002
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
