A meandering midsection—extended digressions on Godfather shtick, anyone?—may discourage some readers from persevering until...
A TV psychologist shrinks from facing her own sibling rivalry issues.
Reagan Bishop is the token talk therapist on the Chicago-based cable talk show I Need a Push. Along with a team of other mental health professionals, including Deva, a New-Age healer (she of the autocorrect malapropisms from Lancaster’s Here I Go Again, 2013), and Dr. Karen, a psychotropic pill peddler, Reagan is charged with “pushing” guests who have agreed to undergo televised treatment to overcome their compulsions, obsessions and phobias in full view of Oprah-contender Wendy Winsberg’s studio audience. Off screen, Reagan deals with her own far-less-tractable psychological challenges. Her parents favor her sisters Geri, an overweight hairdresser, and Mary Mac, mother of eight, vaunting their mundane achievements while ignoring Reagan’s Chicago Marathon time and Good Morning America appearances. After her ambition required her to dump her good-hearted surfer boyfriend, Boyd, the now 30-something Reagan has nothing on her romantic horizon except Sebastian, an equally driven professional who’s just not that into her. When Push is picked up by the networks, suddenly Reagan is faced with a career-ending quandary—the time she now has to achieve her mental makeovers is drastically reduced, thanks to her new budget-conscious boss, Kassel. After her attempt to deter a starlet from stalking a hip-hop superstar backfires catastrophically and hilariously, Reagan’s job is on the line. She enters into an unholy alliance with Deva, whose treatment protocols she has hitherto found as abhorrent as Dr. Karen’s drugs. Using charms and amulets, Reagan astral-projects herself into her TV patients’ bodies long enough to mime a cure for the cameras. But her family still seems determined to belittle her. Lancaster’s unerring ear for hipster parlance and passive-aggressive family snark is on full display—but it isn’t until Reagan risks her most daring body swap yet that the novel finds its narrative stride.
A meandering midsection—extended digressions on Godfather shtick, anyone?—may discourage some readers from persevering until the truly satisfying closing twist.Pub Date: Feb. 4, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-451-23965-5
Page Count: 320
Publisher: New American Library
Review Posted Online: Dec. 7, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2013
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
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