A tale with an excellent premise about art, identity, and relationships that hits a few stumbling blocks.
A troubled pop star crash-lands into the lives of two super-fans in this novel.
Twenty-nine-year-old Normandie Vine is one of the most famous people in the world, boasting several hit albums and a massive teenage fan base. But life in the spotlight is starting to suffocate her, and she’s developed a serious drug problem to cope with her existential ennui. After trashing her car while escaping paparazzi, Normandie checks into Peak Experience, a plush Colorado rehab center that provides little actual respite from tantalizing drugs, gawking fans, or the overbearing control of her agent, Myra Harp. A Klonopin-addled Normandie wanders out of the center soon after arriving, only to stumble onto the highway and climb into a parked car belonging to Fran and Trish Dunwoody, two teenage Normandie super-fans who have traveled from their rural hometown of Endeavor, Nebraska, to hold up supportive signs. Fran and Trish believe that a compassionate and anonymous environment will best help Normandie kick her habit, and abscond with her back to Endeavor. As Hollywood panics and Myra attempts to profit from Normandie’s dramatic disappearance, Trish and Fran move the star into their home with their Uncle Dave, who has cared for the sisters ever since their parents’ death. Normandie’s mental state is in and out—she first wakes up believing she’s 12—and Trish and Fran struggle to unlock the puzzle of the woman’s past while avoiding the notice of their small-town neighbors. Polman’s (Twinbill, 2016) premise allows room for both slapstick comedy and real feelings, though the dialogue’s tendency toward dated slang and zany exclamations mutes the story’s emotional heft (At one point, Fran gushes: “Of all the thousands of fans who were there, she picked us to rescue her! Isn’t that the coolest?”). Normandie’s abduction by the well-intentioned sisters (and their eventually complicit uncle) contains overtones of lies, ownership, and control similarly present in the relationship between the celebrity and her handlers, an intriguing parallel that feels underexplored in the name of portraying the Dunwoodys as innocent and likable. The ending relies on deux ex machina but still generates real empathy for Normandie’s ultimate reckoning with her past. The author’s writing style is enjoyably snappy but can gratingly overuse sentence fragments.
A tale with an excellent premise about art, identity, and relationships that hits a few stumbling blocks.Pub Date: Dec. 5, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-692-97299-1
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Grassy Gutter Press
Review Posted Online: Jan. 19, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
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