This author's first presents more than we ever wanted to know about the life of a Hollywood slacker, by a former stand-up comedienne, author/producer of the musical Life Is a Low-Budget Musical. Marissa Minnion, nicknamed ``Moose'' by a former boyfriend in reference to her imposing nose, has fallen into a coma after eating too many Brazil nuts, but never fear—her life story has been reconstructed here by a crew of academics drawing on a lifetime of letters and journal entries. According to the evidence, Moose had a depressing tendency to trail boyfriends across continents on a moment's notice in pursuit of eternal romance, though all she won for her adventures in Chicago, London, New York, Greece, and Montana were the everyday betrayals and unbearable boredom that came just as easily at home. Home was Venice Beach, where Moose passed her days snorting cocaine from her neighbor's carpet, flirting with elderly men who begged her to spit in their faces, and dabbling in secretarial jobs, an acting career, and classes at UCLA while fighting an overpowering sense of ennui at every turn. Life was not turning out to be a cabaret, she often mused between tokes. In a search for meaning, she mined her experience as the daughter of an abusive psychology teacher and neurotically passive economics teacher to come up with such mathematically-based psychological insights as: ``Intelligence plus irritation multiplied by time equals knowledge squared,'' and ``Duration of patience with X divided by duration of time with X equals enjoyment of X.'' Such gems of wisdom—along with ``I think it likely that the Virgin Mary got pregnant from a hot tub,'' and ``Have you ever noticed how much police cars look like saddle shoes?''—drift through this lugubrious rap session like sweet-smelling smoke, leaving behind that hung-over, cotton-mouth feeling. California weeping, in need of a firmer editorial hand.
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1991
ISBN: 0-571-12933-1
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Faber & Faber/Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1991
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
BOOK REVIEW
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