A first-rate humorist emerges in this assured, ambitious, and unapologetically entertaining satire.
Young’s (Faraway Green, 2015) second novel follows an impotent employee sent by his company to tell an island nation that its funding is being cut off only to be ensnared in the schemes of the eccentric, sex-crazed natives.
Prescott Bullard Jr., head of the Federal Cigar Corporation, is furious that his father has for years paid exorbitant prices for third-rate leaf tobacco from the tiny island of Cigaros, despite the father’s long-ago dalliance with a local. The day after his father dies, Bullard vows to correct this, sending Warren Hornsby—a hapless chemist known mostly for developing a “delay cream” for premature ejaculation—to break the news. Hornsby, suffering from an uncooperative member and an unhappy lover, welcomes the distraction, and he’s soon negotiating the island’s difficult terrain (literal, cultural, and otherwise). The large cast includes obsequious and silver-tongued El Presidente, who distrusts Hornsby’s intentions, as well as his Communist, bloodthirsty brother and rival, Raoul, who wants nothing more than to kill Hornsby out of mere principle. For good measure, author Young also throws in a 200-year-old voodoo priest, a dyspeptic general, and a redemptive love interest named Rita Panatella. Young takes clear delight in giving his characters Pynchon-esque names (e.g., Marco Insertaglio) and allowing them ornate, over-the-top language that might be tiring were it not so consistently funny: “But you, oh great swordsman, are known to frequent the Bordello with a regularity that bespeaks great dedication! It is small wonder your men proclaim loudly that they would follow you anywhere! You are usually on your way to the Bordello!” Although some readers may object to the frequency with which Young’s jokes revert to the sexual and scatological, they will nevertheless admire the creativity and surprises that fill his tense, well-crafted plot.
A first-rate humorist emerges in this assured, ambitious, and unapologetically entertaining satire.Pub Date: Sept. 5, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-329-13654-0
Page Count: 274
Publisher: Mountebank Press
Review Posted Online: Nov. 11, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2015
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles...
Sisters in and out of love.
Meghann Dontess is a high-powered matrimonial lawyer in Seattle who prefers sex with strangers to emotional intimacy: a strategy bound to backfire sooner or later, warns her tough-talking shrink. It’s advice Meghann decides to ignore, along with the memories of her difficult childhood, neglectful mother, and younger sister. Though she managed to reunite Claire with Sam Cavenaugh (her father but not Meghann’s) when her mother abandoned both girls long ago, Meghann still feels guilty that her sister’s life doesn’t measure up, at least on her terms. Never married, Claire ekes out a living running a country campground with her dad and is raising her six-year-old daughter on her own. When she falls in love for the first time with an up-and-coming country musician, Meghann is appalled: Bobby Austin is a three-time loser at marriage—how on earth can Claire be so blind? Bobby’s blunt explanation doesn’t exactly satisfy the concerned big sister, who busies herself planning Claire’s dream wedding anyway. And, to relieve the stress, she beds various guys she picks up in bars, including Dr. Joe Wyatt, a neurosurgeon turned homeless drifter after the demise of his beloved wife Diane (whom he euthanized). When Claire’s awful headache turns out to be a kind of brain tumor known among neurologists as a “terminator,” Joe rallies. Turns out that Claire had befriended his wife on her deathbed, and now in turn he must try to save her. Is it too late? Will Meghann find true love at last?
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles (Distant Shores, 2002, etc.). Kudos for skipping the snifflefest this time around.Pub Date: May 1, 2003
ISBN: 0-345-45073-6
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2003
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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