Well-intentioned though lackluster first novel.
Job trouble, love trouble and a 20-something heroine—sounds like another stroll down chick-lit lane.
As a Brown graduate and a former assistant at an online film studio, Sarah Pelletier should have had little trouble finding a job when 451Films.com went belly-up. But she’s been unemployed for six months now and her bank account is sinking to the single digits. Sarah knows she’s in trouble when gym shorts seem like formal attire and the day’s climax is happy hour with her unbearable roommate. She signs on with an employment agency, but her interviews deteriorate from secretary at an ad agency to a position in property management—all a million miles from her dream of working in film. Worse, Mom sends law-school applications while Dad rattles on about her COBRA plan. Then there’s her friend Laurie’s bright idea that speed-dating will help improve her abysmal interviewing skills. The one bright spot in Sarah’s life comes in the form of Jake, a dishy film-buff with possibly one fatal flaw: he may be on the rebound. Where does all this take the reader? Down an amusing yet all-too-familiar path of girl making good. Given all the well-worn conventions, the success of van der Kwast’s debut depends on Sarah: Is she funny enough, genuine enough, different enough to make it work? Well, not quite. Though the author offers a fresh (and perhaps all too relevant) portrait of a recent college grad struggling to mesh her best dreams with her worst realities, too much relies on Sarah’s plucky narrative, which falls short of holding everything together. By the end, the job Sarah does get as an assistant to New York’s top talent agent (possibly the stepping-stone she needs) is lost when a little white lie gets her fired, leaving Sarah with her biggest decision: Should she go back home to Colorado, or risk all in New York with Jake?
Well-intentioned though lackluster first novel.Pub Date: July 5, 2005
ISBN: 0-7679-1953-X
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Broadway
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2005
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
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
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