Legal eagles skewered—not wittily enough.
Newsflash, regarding blue-chip lawyers: They’re money-grubbing, venal and vacuous. Initially biting, this satirical debut soon bores, cynicism being a one-note melody.
Hiring partner for an L.A. firm that stings clients at $675 an hour, Anonymous Lawyer makes Gordon Gecko look like Gandhi. Like Harvard Law grad Blachman, author of a popular blog, AL too pens a blog—about his bid to deep-six his rival, The Jerk, and brown-nose The New Chairman. “Person” equals “pawn” in his Machiavellian math: He gives subordinates unflattering nicknames (“The One Who’s Never Getting Married,” “The One Who Missed Her Kid’s Funeral”), bitches about anyone pilfering his secretary’s candy and damns all as slackers. You’re allowed one outside interest—family, say, or working out; The Firm owns every other breath. AL never does much of anything other than sneer. And his home life is just as horrid: He prefers America’s Top Model on TiVo to his fake-breasted wife; Anonymous Son and Daughter are disappointments. What drives him is his crusade to morph his Yale Law School niece from idealist into Shylock, and his own climb up the corporate ladder. When New Chairman dies—heart attack at 58—AL exults in the opening. The Jerk provisionally wins, but AL’s eventual worldly success (and moral downfall) end the novel on a gleefully bitter note. Blachman’s fine at capturing the high-end mise en scène—BlackBerries communing 24/7, triple-figure expense-account lunches, smirking dishonesty (lawyers bill clients for web-surfing and call it “research”). All kinda funny, and sorta telling—in a not-as-good-as-Brett-Easton-Ellis ’80s-esque way. But lacking a story, any characters who aren’t cartoons and any mood other than pissed-off, the tale leaves the reader feeling listless and mildly polluted.
Legal eagles skewered—not wittily enough.Pub Date: Aug. 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-8050-7981-5
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2006
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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