A shrewd, funny and sometimes brutal vision of troubled times.
A geopolitical thriller that aims to please everybody: less gunplay than Tom Clancy, more yuks than Don DeLillo.
J.P. Yates is the sort of expert speaker—among those he addresses are members of governments and corporations—who sells out conventions: He expounds regularly on matters of human longevity, God, porn and whatever else a decent honorarium will dislodge from his brain. But at one gathering in Johannesburg, prompted by a few drinks and a recent breakup, Yates decides he’s had enough and knocks down the house of cards, proclaiming in a speech that “I know nothing” and crowning himself “the founding father of the Coalition of the Clueless.” Both his reputation and his body get roughed up as a reward for his candor, but Yates’s stunt also attracts the attention of a shady quasi-governmental group that invites him to travel the world and report back on anti-Americanism wherever he finds it. In fast-paced prose, Othmer tracks Yates’s travels to Greenland, Italy, Fiji and the mythical war-torn land of Bas‘ar (a stand-in for Iraq), where the truth about his patrons is ultimately revealed. But the main plot isn’t as much fun as the rhetorical detours. Othmer offers a darkly comic vision of a planet slowly but surely sliding into dystopia: Terrorists are busy on the ground, while in space the wealthy residents of an orbiting space hotel asphyxiate on live TV after the oxygen generator malfunctions. By the closing chapters, Othmer’s initial crankiness about our collective self-delusion gives way to full-blown cynicism—any signs that life in Bas‘ar is improving are the invention of press releases and jury-rigged photo-ops. But the tone is much too sober to qualify as a partisan political rant, and Othmer is a sure-footed commentator; Yates’s worries about who’s in charge and what his role is mirrors the concerns of any citizen watching the news.
A shrewd, funny and sometimes brutal vision of troubled times.Pub Date: June 6, 2006
ISBN: 0-385-51722-X
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
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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