Surprisingly good, despite a brief slip into sentimentality near the end.
In Cox’s fiction debut, Wall Street meets California when two surfing buddies launch an internet startup.
Readers sit in the passenger seat of a car in which Tom Rey is attempting to commit suicide by carbon monoxide poisoning. From this startling introduction onward, Cox plots the story well enough that readers will eagerly anticipate each new chapter—even if the characters stay fixed on California memories of ocean waves and simpler times of sex, beer and drugs. Before his misguided attempt at self-destruction, Tom is lured to the East Coast, where his friend Fred Hanson is slaving over his new Internet startup, WebSurferUSA. The pair trade shorts and sunny lingo for more professional attire and more complicated problems. But when business turns cutthroat, they return to the calm of the ocean—if only in their minds. Memories of college and road trips prove harder to escape than board meetings and office politics. Cox engages readers with lively descriptions that carry personality and a reliable touch of humor. The book occasionally stumbles over business terminology—often presented in quotes—that distracts or overwhelms readers with the sometimes heavy language. A curious undercurrent of homoerotic imagery bobs beneath a heterosexual focus. The novel exposes a scandalous world of sex and secrets engulfing the characters, pulling readers into controversy both back home and at corporate headquarters. The two settings, though vastly different, run parallel in suspense as they mix together in dangerous amounts like pills and booze.
Surprisingly good, despite a brief slip into sentimentality near the end.Pub Date: Aug. 16, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-615-14937-0
Page Count: 244
Publisher: Touching Covers, Inc.
Review Posted Online: June 5, 2012
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
APPRECIATIONS
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
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