Walking the line between self-obsession and thoughtful portraiture, Smyles explores an inextricable link between sex and...
Smyles (Iris Has Free Time, 2013) delivers a maddening and moving not-quite-novel, not-quite-memoir about a wayward eccentric who can’t connect with others.
Depending on how you look at it, Iris is a writer who spends not a moment of this novel writing—except that she has somehow managed to finish every page the reader holds. Instead of working, Iris thinks about her inability to maintain healthy relationships while simultaneously trying to frighten her friends and lovers away. As with most precocious would-be intellectuals, she’s able to list plenty of reasons why friendship is just too much of a hassle, even wishing for a Facebook- and Kickstarter-esque service that would allow “friends” to support one another monetarily in lieu of actually—God forbid—spending time together. In one of the book’s many hapless episodes, Iris even attempts to scare off a particularly boring boyfriend by popping in multiple documentaries about historic explorations gone haywire—the Donner Party, Shackleton & Co.—right before the doomed couple has sex. “I press on,” Iris confides to her reader, “viewing my debasement not as a failure of will but the final straw in a heroic tale of survival.” Characteristically, debasement is easier for Iris than actually cutting ties and facing the world alone, a reality she attempts to avoid at all costs. Emotional survival is the name of the game, since Iris lives in Manhattan thanks to an influx of cash from her parents that her brother dubs “I-fare, ‘like welfare but for Iris.' " At once both tone-deaf and bitingly funny, Smyles has created a contemporary portrait of the disaffected artist barely making her way in the big city, facing no repercussions except her own loneliness. Structured in small episodes like Homer’s Odyssey, which serves as an epigraph for the book, Smyles’ adventuress calls to mind a Jane Bowles heroine who's read Ulysses while scrolling in despair through 10 open apps on her iPhone. Smyles’ portrayal of Iris in all her weirdness offers much to recognize, fear, and embrace.
Walking the line between self-obsession and thoughtful portraiture, Smyles explores an inextricable link between sex and loneliness, self-loathing and self-acceptance in contemporary New York.Pub Date: June 28, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-544-70338-4
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Review Posted Online: March 29, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2016
BOOK REVIEW
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with...
Talk-show queen takes tumble as millions jeer.
Nora Bridges is a wildly popular radio spokesperson for family-first virtues, but her loyal listeners don't know that she walked out on her husband and teenaged daughters years ago and didn't look back. Now that a former lover has sold racy pix of naked Nora and horny himself to a national tabloid, her estranged daughter Ruby, an unsuccessful stand-up comic in Los Angeles, has been approached to pen a tell-all. Greedy for the fat fee she's been promised, Ruby agrees and heads for the San Juan Islands, eager to get reacquainted with the mom she plans to betray. Once in the family homestead, nasty Ruby alternately sulks and glares at her mother, who is temporarily wheelchair-bound as a result of a post-scandal car crash. Uncaring, Ruby begins writing her side of the story when she's not strolling on the beach with former sweetheart Dean Sloan, the son of wealthy socialites who basically ignored him and his gay brother Eric. Eric, now dying of cancer and also in a wheelchair, has returned to the island. This dismal threesome catch up on old times, recalling their childhood idylls on the island. After Ruby's perfect big sister Caroline shows up, there's another round of heartfelt talk. Nora gradually reveals the truth about her unloving husband and her late father's alcoholism, which led her to seek the approval of others at the cost of her own peace of mind. And so on. Ruby is aghast to discover that she doesn't know everything after all, but Dean offers her subdued comfort. Happy endings await almost everyone—except for readers of this nobly preachy snifflefest.
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with syrupy platitudes about life and love.Pub Date: March 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-609-60737-5
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2001
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
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