A swift, unusually entertaining journey through present-day public relations.
Holden (Second that Emotion, 2012) offers a novel about a possible new Messiah—and a company that must sell the world on the concept.
After a successful career at advertising firm CREATIF, 51-year-old Mal Thomas is set to retire in the Blue Ridge Mountains with his dear wife, Mara. Although he left on poor terms with his former colleague Oliver “OMG” Melville Grouse III, he’s ready to relax—that is, until a former client lures him out of retirement with an incredible offer. Mal, along with others from his old firm, are taken by private jet to Miami to meet with Alfredo Baptiste, a Cuban refugee who leads BAPTIST, a massive company involved in “seemingly every key area of American business and industry.” He’s worked with CREATIF in the past, and now he has a lucrative assignment for them—if they’re willing to take it. In short, he wants to tell the world that a young man from Brazil named Sebastian is the Messiah. It’s an odd offer, to say the least, but after some discussion (and some reflection on Alfredo’s willingness to pay them lots of money), Mal and his team agree to the challenge. They tackle it in an ever-so-modern way, using social media, celebrities, and their own advertising savvy. The story follows an oddly believable path; if a company were trying to sell the world on a Messiah, this might very well be how they would do it. The plot does takes time to develop—many initial pages are devoted to Mal’s background, including his childhood in England, and a rundown of his colleagues—but once things get moving, the book is hard to put down. Readers will quickly ascertain that there are two ways for the story to go: either Sebastian truly is the Messiah and there’s a supernatural climax in store, or some sort of hoax is afoot and readers must try to ascertain the rub of it all. Figuring this out proves to be an enjoyable adventure as seen through the eyes of a most unlikely hero.
A swift, unusually entertaining journey through present-day public relations.Pub Date: Oct. 3, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-9978970-0-5
Page Count: 250
Publisher: Clean Publishing
Review Posted Online: June 26, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
Britisher Swift's sixth novel (Ever After, 1992 etc.) and fourth to appear here is a slow-to-start but then captivating tale of English working-class families in the four decades following WW II. When Jack Dodds dies suddenly of cancer after years of running a butcher shop in London, he leaves a strange request—namely, that his ashes be scattered off Margate pier into the sea. And who could better be suited to fulfill this wish than his three oldest drinking buddies—insurance man Ray, vegetable seller Lenny, and undertaker Vic, all of whom, like Jack himself, fought also as soldiers or sailors in the long-ago world war. Swift's narrative start, with its potential for the melodramatic, is developed instead with an economy, heart, and eye that release (through the characters' own voices, one after another) the story's humanity and depth instead of its schmaltz. The jokes may be weak and self- conscious when the three old friends meet at their local pub in the company of the urn holding Jack's ashes; but once the group gets on the road, in an expensive car driven by Jack's adoptive son, Vince, the story starts gradually to move forward, cohere, and deepen. The reader learns in time why it is that no wife comes along, why three marriages out of three broke apart, and why Vince always hated his stepfather Jack and still does—or so he thinks. There will be stories of innocent youth, suffering wives, early loves, lost daughters, secret affairs, and old antagonisms—including a fistfight over the dead on an English hilltop, and a strewing of Jack's ashes into roiling seawaves that will draw up feelings perhaps unexpectedly strong. Without affectation, Swift listens closely to the lives that are his subject and creates a songbook of voices part lyric, part epic, part working-class social realism—with, in all, the ring to it of the honest, human, and true.
Pub Date: April 5, 1996
ISBN: 0-679-41224-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 1996
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