Additional ado about absolutely nothing.
A debut novel in which Generation Y attempts to outdo its predecessor in terms of vapid ambition. Life is like a game—that’s what we learn in chapters named for boardgames as varied as chess and Battleship. Jack is your average twentysomething working as an ad rep, but he has connections to a seamy underworld in the form of Sammy, local restaurateur/Mafia figure, and of his father, an inveterate gambler. Then Jack meets Hope, a new breed of yuppie. What they have in common is recent deaths: Jack’s lost a friend, Hope’s lost her father. For a while it all seems like a simple story of young love, but when Jack’s ex-girlfriend resurfaces, he goes ahead and makes out with her because everyone under 30 knows it’s not really cheating unless you actually have “sex,” whatever that is. This precedent inaugurates additional infidelities, including with Meredith, a 40-year-old encountered at an aerobics class. Of course, Jack’s hot, Hope’s hot, and even Meredith’s hot. Hope and Jack get married anyway, but it turns out Hope has hitched with Jack only because, according to her family’s financial arrangements, she gets a bunch of dough when she gets married. Hope then decides to get pregnant, but promptly aborts the child by taking a large quantity of aspirin. By then, the story has begun to darken: Jack’s gambler father is stalking him, and the mob may be involved. Even so, when the narrative begins to change gears it feels accidental and indecisive rather than tactical.
Additional ado about absolutely nothing.Pub Date: Feb. 12, 2002
ISBN: 0-7432-1626-1
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2001
BOOK REVIEW
Short, to the point, and absolutely unremarkable: sure to be another medium-hot romance-lite hit for Sparks, who at the very...
A mother unburdens a story of past romance to her troubled daughter for no good reason.
Adrienne Willis is a middle-aged mother with three kids who, not surprisingly, finds herself in an emotional lurch after her husband dumps her for a younger, prettier thing. Needing to recharge her batteries, Adrienne takes a holiday, watching over her friend’s small bed-and-breakfast in the North Carolina beach town of Rodanthe. Then Dr. Paul Flanner appears, himself a cold fish in need of a little warming up. This is the scene laid out by Adrienne to her daughter, Amanda, in a framing device of unusual crudity from Sparks (A Bend in the Road, 2001, etc.). Amanda’s husband has recently died and she hasn’t quite gotten around to figuring out how to keep on living. Imagining that nothing is better for a broken heart than somebody else’s sad story, Adrienne tells her daughter about the great lost love of her life. Paul came to Rodanthe in order to speak with the bereaved family of a woman who had just died after he had operated on her. Paul, of course, was not to blame, but still he suffers inside. Add to that a recent divorce and an estranged child and the result is a tortured soul whom Adrienne finds absolutely irresistible. Of course, the beach, an impending storm, the fact that there are no other visitors around, a roaring fireplace, and any number of moments that could have been culled from a J. Crew catalogue and a Folgers’s commercial make romance just about inevitable. Sparks couldn’t be less subtle in this harshly mechanical story that adheres to formula in a way that would make an assembly-line romance writer blush.
Short, to the point, and absolutely unremarkable: sure to be another medium-hot romance-lite hit for Sparks, who at the very least can never be accused of overstaying his welcome.Pub Date: Sept. 18, 2002
ISBN: 0-446-53133-2
Page Count: 224
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2002
This is the sort of book that stirs one so deeply that it is almost impossible to attempt to convey the impression it leaves. It is the story of today's Exodus, of America's great trek, as the hordes of dispossessed tenant farmers from the dust bowl turn their hopes to the promised land of California's fertile valleys. The story of one family, with the "hangers-on" that the great heart of extreme poverty sometimes collects, but in that story is symbolized the saga of a movement in which society is before the bar. What an indictment of a system — what an indictment of want and poverty in the land of plenty! There is flash after flash of unforgettable pictures, sharply etched with that restraint and power of pen that singles Steinbeck out from all his contemporaries. There is anger here, but it is a deep and disciplined passion, of a man who speaks out of the mind and heart of his knowledge of a people. One feels in reading that so they must think and feel and speak and live. It is an unresolved picture, a record of history still in the making. Not a book for casual reading. Not a book for unregenerate conservative. But a book for everyone whose social conscience is astir — or who is willing to face facts about a segment of American life which is and which must be recognized. Steinbeck is coming into his own. A new and full length novel from his pen is news. Publishers backing with advertising, promotion aids, posters, etc. Sure to be one of the big books of the Spring. First edition limited to half of advance as of March 1st. One half of dealer's orders to be filled with firsts.
Pub Date: April 14, 1939
ISBN: 0143039431
Page Count: 532
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Oct. 5, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 1939
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