by James Howard Kunstler ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 1, 2004
Frenetic satire with its moments—while the mannered style grates.
As if Martha Stewart didn’t have problems enough.
Maggie, a mega-rich, mega-chic authority on all things domestic walks, talks, and looks just like Martha. Cook up a handful of celebrities and trillionaires, lightly toasted. Throw in Kenneth Darling, Maggie’s husband, philanderer with a fortune from Wall Street—no cooking needed, since he’s already stewed for this ho-ho-holiest of nights, Christmas Eve. Garnish the whole with a winsome twentysomething, pat her on the bottom and turn up the heat. Oh, dear, it looks as if Kenneth is doing the patting (and more), and Maggie is steaming. Her only weapon a hot-glue gun, she orders him to pack and leave—and don’t ask where your Turnbull & Asser shirts are, buster. Kenneth protests his innocence somewhat too vigorously—with the fireplace poker—and is asked to leave again, this time by the Connecticut police. So Maggie Darling and her adorable teenagers begin the new year on their own. Can a blond, beautiful multimillionairess find real love in mean old Manhattan? Frederick Swann, a singer with a nimbus of golden curls, adores Maggie, and he’s only a few tables away, penning an invitation to—oh, dear, the restaurant has just been invaded by a gun-waving posse of young thugs speaking in colorful inner-city dialect. They seem to want something, and it’s not a table. How surreal. How edgy. And how wonderful to have something meaningful to talk about (and the chance to add a few points about urban decay, something of a nonfiction specialty: The Geography Of Nowhere, 1993, etc.) for novelist Kunstler (An Embarrassment of Riches, 1985, etc.). Another of Maggie’s admirers, Reggie Chang, photographer for her upcoming book, can’t help imagining America’s favorite housewife in a teeny-tiny apron and nothing else. Alas, she’s not interested. The distraught Reggie attempts suicide. Further complications and a zany cast of thousands make Maggie’s life a (sometimes happy) hell.
Frenetic satire with its moments—while the mannered style grates.Pub Date: Jan. 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-87113-910-3
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Atlantic Monthly
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2003
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by Colleen Hoover ‧ RELEASE DATE: Aug. 2, 2016
Packed with riveting drama and painful truths, this book powerfully illustrates the devastation of abuse—and the strength of...
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Hoover’s (November 9, 2015, etc.) latest tackles the difficult subject of domestic violence with romantic tenderness and emotional heft.
At first glance, the couple is edgy but cute: Lily Bloom runs a flower shop for people who hate flowers; Ryle Kincaid is a surgeon who says he never wants to get married or have kids. They meet on a rooftop in Boston on the night Ryle loses a patient and Lily attends her abusive father’s funeral. The provocative opening takes a dark turn when Lily receives a warning about Ryle’s intentions from his sister, who becomes Lily’s employee and close friend. Lily swears she’ll never end up in another abusive home, but when Ryle starts to show all the same warning signs that her mother ignored, Lily learns just how hard it is to say goodbye. When Ryle is not in the throes of a jealous rage, his redeeming qualities return, and Lily can justify his behavior: “I think we needed what happened on the stairwell to happen so that I would know his past and we’d be able to work on it together,” she tells herself. Lily marries Ryle hoping the good will outweigh the bad, and the mother-daughter dynamics evolve beautifully as Lily reflects on her childhood with fresh eyes. Diary entries fancifully addressed to TV host Ellen DeGeneres serve as flashbacks to Lily’s teenage years, when she met her first love, Atlas Corrigan, a homeless boy she found squatting in a neighbor’s house. When Atlas turns up in Boston, now a successful chef, he begs Lily to leave Ryle. Despite the better option right in front of her, an unexpected complication forces Lily to cut ties with Atlas, confront Ryle, and try to end the cycle of abuse before it’s too late. The relationships are portrayed with compassion and honesty, and the author’s note at the end that explains Hoover’s personal connection to the subject matter is a must-read.
Packed with riveting drama and painful truths, this book powerfully illustrates the devastation of abuse—and the strength of the survivors.Pub Date: Aug. 2, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-5011-1036-8
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: May 30, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2016
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SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
by Mark Z. Danielewski ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 6, 2000
The story's very ambiguity steadily feeds its mysteriousness and power, and Danielewski's mastery of postmodernist and...
An amazingly intricate and ambitious first novel - ten years in the making - that puts an engrossing new spin on the traditional haunted-house tale.
Texts within texts, preceded by intriguing introductory material and followed by 150 pages of appendices and related "documents" and photographs, tell the story of a mysterious old house in a Virginia suburb inhabited by esteemed photographer-filmmaker Will Navidson, his companion Karen Green (an ex-fashion model), and their young children Daisy and Chad. The record of their experiences therein is preserved in Will's film The Davidson Record - which is the subject of an unpublished manuscript left behind by a (possibly insane) old man, Frank Zampano - which falls into the possession of Johnny Truant, a drifter who has survived an abusive childhood and the perverse possessiveness of his mad mother (who is institutionalized). As Johnny reads Zampano's manuscript, he adds his own (autobiographical) annotations to the scholarly ones that already adorn and clutter the text (a trick perhaps influenced by David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest) - and begins experiencing panic attacks and episodes of disorientation that echo with ominous precision the content of Davidson's film (their house's interior proves, "impossibly," to be larger than its exterior; previously unnoticed doors and corridors extend inward inexplicably, and swallow up or traumatize all who dare to "explore" their recesses). Danielewski skillfully manipulates the reader's expectations and fears, employing ingeniously skewed typography, and throwing out hints that the house's apparent malevolence may be related to the history of the Jamestown colony, or to Davidson's Pulitzer Prize-winning photograph of a dying Vietnamese child stalked by a waiting vulture. Or, as "some critics [have suggested,] the house's mutations reflect the psychology of anyone who enters it."
The story's very ambiguity steadily feeds its mysteriousness and power, and Danielewski's mastery of postmodernist and cinema-derived rhetoric up the ante continuously, and stunningly. One of the most impressive excursions into the supernatural in many a year.Pub Date: March 6, 2000
ISBN: 0-375-70376-4
Page Count: 704
Publisher: Pantheon
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2000
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