Younger readers may see this as satire stuffed with hilarious ironies; those over 25 may find themselves not in the market.
Made-for-TV first novel about a trio of ambitious Arizona high-school dropouts lusting for musical success who become almost famous as the group Masterful Johnson.
Stella, Paque, and Daisy moon over faded ’80s rockers Bananarama and, when they form Masterful Johnson, hope to style themselves after the all-girl group—despite having little or no musical talent. Each band member narrates a third of the story, which opens with Paque's version: dressed as rock stars, the girls drive around Phoenix in a stretch limo belonging to the father of one of their friends, hanging out the windows and waving at cuties. They cut a vanity record that goes unsold, then take up modeling, although their first trip down a Phoenix runway finds them upstaged by a ten-year-old boy gymnast. Stella records celebrity slayings in her Murder Book, little knowing that Masterful Johnson will someday be in it. She leaves for Hollywood while Daisy and Paque record their first demo, writing the songs "I'd Kill You If I Thought I Could Get Away With It" and "Do Fuck Off." When the three guys they make the demo with are murdered (one is a senator's son), the girls become infamous, as does "I'd Kill You If I Thought I Could Get Away With It." Meanwhile, "Do Fuck Off" plays over KUKQ radio piped into McDonald's as the girls eat hot apple pie. To capitalize on the press, Phoenix's Cactus Records releases Daisy and Paque's demo as the first Masterful Johnson single, followed by an EP filled out with "Desperately Seeking Pacino" and other songs. When Alan Hood invites them to film World Gone Water in Hollywood, the girls think they have it made at last . . . until even that dream turns into fairy dust.
Younger readers may see this as satire stuffed with hilarious ironies; those over 25 may find themselves not in the market.Pub Date: April 9, 2001
ISBN: 1-58234-113-3
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2001
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
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
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
APPRECIATIONS
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