A guilty pleasure for readers who want reassurance that they’re smarter, nicer, and more honest than the press.
New Yorker senior editor Frank’s first novel is the faux memoir of an ambitious, monumentally obtuse Washington columnist whose “chief flaw is an inability to recognize [his] other flaws.”
Urged by the elder George Bush that somebody who’s known all those people and called all those shots ought to write it all down, Brandon Sladder begins with his days on his college newspaper and as reporter and columnist for the Buffalo Vindicator. After getting his father fired from his insurance agency by nosing around in his confidential records, Brandon blackmails his editor into launching him as a D.C. insider, using strategic seductions, betrayals, and suckings-up to continue his meteoric rise. In an amusing, though obvious, parody of every self-aggrandizing journalistic memoir ever written, Brandon sanctimoniously defends his troglodyte political views, reverentially quotes his sententious descriptions of pols from Jack Kennedy to Bill Clinton, and drops enough names, actual and fictional, to fill the index Frank helpfully supplies. But in Washington the political is personal, as Brandon demonstrates by flirting with Georgetown hostess Madeleine Whitbridge, his entrée to Beltway society; seducing bosomy Esther Goldenstein, daughter of his editor at New Terrain; and romancing patrician Gretchen Furlong, the horsey socialite who becomes his first wife. Meantime, half an inch below the surface, Brandon’s darkening friendship with Bob Hudnut, the future congressperson he first met in the hall outside a hooker’s apartment, serves as a reminder that his fall will be swift, deserved, and eminently unsurprising. If the tale is familiar, however, Frank shows a fine ear for tosh: “I cannot say that I agreed with most of what I heard from my father; nor, in any case, do I remember very much. But growing up as his son undoubtedly helped me to become the person I am.”
A guilty pleasure for readers who want reassurance that they’re smarter, nicer, and more honest than the press.Pub Date: June 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-7432-1253-3
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2001
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with...
Talk-show queen takes tumble as millions jeer.
Nora Bridges is a wildly popular radio spokesperson for family-first virtues, but her loyal listeners don't know that she walked out on her husband and teenaged daughters years ago and didn't look back. Now that a former lover has sold racy pix of naked Nora and horny himself to a national tabloid, her estranged daughter Ruby, an unsuccessful stand-up comic in Los Angeles, has been approached to pen a tell-all. Greedy for the fat fee she's been promised, Ruby agrees and heads for the San Juan Islands, eager to get reacquainted with the mom she plans to betray. Once in the family homestead, nasty Ruby alternately sulks and glares at her mother, who is temporarily wheelchair-bound as a result of a post-scandal car crash. Uncaring, Ruby begins writing her side of the story when she's not strolling on the beach with former sweetheart Dean Sloan, the son of wealthy socialites who basically ignored him and his gay brother Eric. Eric, now dying of cancer and also in a wheelchair, has returned to the island. This dismal threesome catch up on old times, recalling their childhood idylls on the island. After Ruby's perfect big sister Caroline shows up, there's another round of heartfelt talk. Nora gradually reveals the truth about her unloving husband and her late father's alcoholism, which led her to seek the approval of others at the cost of her own peace of mind. And so on. Ruby is aghast to discover that she doesn't know everything after all, but Dean offers her subdued comfort. Happy endings await almost everyone—except for readers of this nobly preachy snifflefest.
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with syrupy platitudes about life and love.Pub Date: March 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-609-60737-5
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2001
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
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
