Playboy editor Malanowski (Loose Lips, 1995, etc.) deftly shoots fat fish in the barrel that is the nation’s capital.
The U.S. vice president, wondering if he really couldn’t do a much better job than his boss, finds a way to answer that interesting question.
Godwin Pope is restless. The filthy rich Silicon Valley entrepreneur, having been sweet-talked into running with the low-life Louisiana politician who cut him off at the knees in the presidential primaries, has found the pitcher of lukewarm spit that is the vice-presidency to be as stultifying as all of its incumbents warned it would be. Worse than the boredom for handsome bachelor Pope is the frustration of seeing his opponent-turned-running mate royally screwing up the job that Godwin could have done well. This is not just his opinion. President Jack Mahone’s poll figures make President George W. Bush’s numbers look robust. Everybody agrees he’s in over his head. And now the party insiders have started to admit that the wrong man is in the Oval Office. The last straw for Godwin is a request from the president to do what in less august circumstances would be called pimping. Then the vice president, who made his zillions seeing and seizing opportunities that would be invisible to lesser mortals, spots a way to bring Mahone’s wretched rule to an end. There is a splendid confluence of chance events, involving a satellite sale to the Chinese, the dreams of the president’s country singer brother and some spectacularly compromising videos of a prominent football player that, with just the right tweaking from Godwin, will almost certainly do the trick. Does it bother Godwin that his manipulations unwittingly involve the love of his life, a Pulitzer Prize–winning reporter trying to redeem her career after revelations of sexual impropriety? Or that he is essentially framing an innocent man? Or that his scheme will involve his only real friend? Hey. Politics ain’t beanbag.
Playboy editor Malanowski (Loose Lips, 1995, etc.) deftly shoots fat fish in the barrel that is the nation’s capital.Pub Date: July 17, 2007
ISBN: 978-0-385-52048-4
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2007
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
Soft-focus story moves right along with few surprises. This time around, Hannah avoids the soap-opera complications of her...
Another middle-aged mom in a muddle.
After years of false starts and big hopes, Elizabeth’s ruggedly handsome husband Jack, a former football star, just landed a spot as a sportscaster on national news. He still loves her, even though much younger women are giving him come-hither looks. Heck, he doesn’t want to betray the love of his life after she helped him kick drugs and stuck by him even when he was a struggling has-been. And won’t it seem hypocritical if he fools around with his sexy assistant while he does in-depth reporting on a rape case involving a famous basketball center? Well, he fools around anyway. Elizabeth, nicknamed Birdie, knows nothing of this, but she withdraws from Jack when her hard-drinking, salt-of-the-earth father has a stroke and dies. Now no one will call her “sugar beet” ever again. Time to return home to Tennessee and contend with Anita, the sort-of-evil stepmother so trashy she wears pink puffy slippers all day long. Naturally, it turns out that Anita actually has a heart of gold and knows a few things about Birdie’s dead mother that were hushed up for years. Mom was an artist, just like Birdie, and an old scandal comes to light as Anita unrolls a vibrant canvas that portrays her secret lover. Perhaps, Birdie muses, her mother died of heartbreak, never having followed her true love or developed her talent. Has she, too, compromised everything she holds dear? Hoping to find out, Birdie joins a support group that promises to reconnect confused women with their passion. She and Jack separate, prompting a how-dare-you fit from their grown daughters. Will Birdie fly her empty nest? Will she go back to college for a degree in art? Will her brooding watercolors ever sell?
Soft-focus story moves right along with few surprises. This time around, Hannah avoids the soap-opera complications of her previous tales (Summer Island, 2001, etc.).Pub Date: July 1, 2002
ISBN: 0-345-45071-X
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2002
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