A thorough, detail-heavy, and convincing story about the rise and fall of an empire.
A graduate student writes her dissertation about a billionaire real estate developer imprisoned for securities fraud in this debut novel.
K.T. “Katy” Alvarez is working toward a Ph.D. in forensic psychology at the University of Washington when she hears of Mark Kauffman. In a classic rags-to-riches scenario, Kauffman went from spending his childhood in a converted chicken coop to owning a real estate empire valued in the billions. Mark is now in prison for fraud, and Katy, for her dissertation, wants to determine whether he has any mental illnesses or personality disorders that may have influenced his crimes. Mark declines the offer but later reconsiders and tells Katy the story of his life. He assures her he isn’t a criminal and his only intention was to be nice to friends and family, but Katy views him as spoiled and arrogant. As the two get better acquainted, Mark realizes that Katy has endured unbelievable hardships and her academic success did not come easily. Mark’s real estate concerns began with a $6,000 home purchased in Seattle in the 1960s and grew to astronomical heights, so much so that he was able to easily fund his son’s biotech startup. But certain financial maneuvers got the attention of the Securities and Exchange Commission, and Mark’s whole world began to unravel. Pauw’s mostly epistolary storytelling is always captivating and is peppered with enough knowledge of finance and law to give the novel a good deal of credibility. On the emotional side, Katy’s tale about life with a troubled mother adds an important layer as she seeks greater connection with her study subject. Intriguing moral questions are raised here, in large part about law and justice in the United States, though the structure of the book does cram most key issues into the third act.
A thorough, detail-heavy, and convincing story about the rise and fall of an empire.Pub Date: Feb. 3, 2020
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 380
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: May 7, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Uneven but fitfully amusing.
Betrayed by her husband, a severely depressed young woman gets drawn into the over-the-top festivities at a lavish wedding.
Phoebe Stone, who teaches English literature at a St. Louis college, is plotting her own demise. Her husband, Matt, has left her for another woman, and Phoebe is taking it hard. Indeed, she's determined just where and how she will end it all: at an oceanfront hotel in Newport, where she will lie on a king-sized canopy bed and take a bottle of her cat’s painkillers. At the hotel, Phoebe meets bride-to-be Lila, a headstrong rich girl presiding over her own extravagant six-day wedding celebration. Lila thought she had booked every room in the hotel, and learning of Phoebe's suicidal intentions, she forbids this stray guest from disrupting the nuptials: “No. You definitely can’t kill yourself. This is my wedding week.” After the punchy opening, a grim flashback to the meltdown of Phoebe's marriage temporarily darkens the mood, but things pick up when spoiled Lila interrupts Phoebe's preparations and sweeps her up in the wedding juggernaut. The slide from earnest drama to broad farce is somewhat jarring, but from this point on, Espach crafts an enjoyable—if overstuffed—comedy of manners. When the original maid of honor drops out, Phoebe is persuaded, against her better judgment, to take her place. There’s some fun to be had here: The wedding party—including groom-to-be Gary, a widower, and his 11-year-old daughter—takes surfing lessons; the women in the group have a session with a Sex Woman. But it all goes on too long, and the humor can seem forced, reaching a low point when someone has sex with the vintage wedding car (you don’t want to know the details). Later, when two characters have a meet-cute in a hot tub, readers will guess exactly how the marriage plot resolves.
Uneven but fitfully amusing.Pub Date: July 30, 2024
ISBN: 9781250899576
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: Sept. 13, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
I Who Have Never Known Men ($22.00; May 1997; 224 pp.; 1-888363-43-6): In this futuristic fantasy (which is immediately reminiscent of Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale), the nameless narrator passes from her adolescent captivity among women who are kept in underground cages following some unspecified global catastrophe, to a life as, apparently, the last woman on earth. The material is stretched thin, but Harpman's eye for detail and command of tone (effectively translated from the French original) give powerful credibility to her portrayal of a human tabula rasa gradually acquiring a fragmentary comprehension of the phenomena of life and loving, and a moving plangency to her muted cri de coeur (``I am the sterile offspring of a race about which I know nothing, not even whether it has become extinct'').
Pub Date: May 1, 1997
ISBN: 1-888363-43-6
Page Count: 224
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1997
BOOK REVIEW
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