Lots of steam but no real heat, from the ever-shameless Collins (Infamous, 1996, etc.).
Clunky potboiler from the former queen of B-movies and TV soaps, starring the descendants of a humble Irish housemaid who reach the heights of Hollywood stardom.
Young Millie McClancey, orphaned by the 1917 influenza epidemic, takes a job in the London house of a duke—and gets noticed by his dissolute son, who can’t resist her flame-red curls, cerulean eyes, and whatnot. Her ruination begins innocently enough: Tobias Swannell, handsome, swaggering heir to the dukedom and all its properties, loves to hear the sweet young thing sing music-hall airs, but her impromptu concerts lead to significant fooling around on the sofa. Pregnant and disgraced, Millie is cast out by the stern butler, then befriended by an elderly (and fortunately homosexual) theater producer, who puts her on the stage and arranges for someone else to care for her illegitimate daughter. Soon the toast of London and then New York, Millie throws all her energy into her career, warbling away in near-nudity and thrilling audiences that include sexy gangster Marco Novello. Millie’s inevitable slide into drink and depression—and her mysterious death in an explosion—put her daughter Vickie next in line for stardom, aided by Marco. Not getting the role of Scarlett O’Hara is a setback, but pin-up fame during WWII awaits, plus innumerable parts in lousy movies. Much-married Vickie moves on to the perverted grandson of the dissolute duke, not knowing that there’s an incestuous link. Her daughter Lulu, sired by the love of her life (a Gary Cooper clone), becomes a world-famous model known for her sultry sensuality and lesbian affairs. As a child, she accidentally saw the Cooper clone banging away lustily at her naked Mummy, turning her off men forever—except for one hot night with a paid superstud, resulting in a daughter, also Millie, who becomes an overnight rock superstar at 14.
Lots of steam but no real heat, from the ever-shameless Collins (Infamous, 1996, etc.).Pub Date: Nov. 13, 2002
ISBN: 1-4013-0000-6
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Hyperion
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2002
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A modern day fable, with modern implications in a deceiving simplicity, by the author of Dickens. Dali and Others (Reynal & Hitchcock, p. 138), whose critical brilliance is well adapted to this type of satire. This tells of the revolt on a farm, against humans, when the pigs take over the intellectual superiority, training the horses, cows, sheep, etc., into acknowledging their greatness. The first hints come with the reading out of a pig who instigated the building of a windmill, so that the electric power would be theirs, the idea taken over by Napoleon who becomes topman with no maybes about it. Napoleon trains the young puppies to be his guards, dickers with humans, gradually instigates a reign of terror, and breaks the final commandment against any animal walking on two legs. The old faithful followers find themselves no better off for food and work than they were when man ruled them, learn their final disgrace when they see Napoleon and Squealer carousing with their enemies... A basic statement of the evils of dictatorship in that it not only corrupts the leaders, but deadens the intelligence and awareness of those led so that tyranny is inevitable. Mr. Orwell's animals exist in their own right, with a narrative as individual as it is apt in political parody.
Pub Date: Aug. 26, 1946
ISBN: 0452277507
Page Count: 114
Publisher: Harcourt, Brace
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1946
Jonathan Livingston Kitty, it’s not.
A lonely postman learns that he’s about to die—and reflects on life as he bargains with a Hawaiian-shirt–wearing devil.
The 30-year-old first-person narrator in filmmaker/novelist Kawamura’s slim novel is, by his own admission, “boring…a monotone guy,” so unimaginative that, when he learns he has a brain tumor, the bucket list he writes down is dull enough that “even the cat looked disgusted with me.” Luckily—or maybe not—a friendly devil, dubbed Aloha, pops onto the scene, and he’s willing to make a deal: an extra day of life in exchange for being allowed to remove something pleasant from the world. The first thing excised is phones, which goes well enough. (The narrator is pleasantly surprised to find that “people seemed to have no problem finding something to fill up their free time.”) But deals with the devil do have a way of getting complicated. This leads to shallow musings (“Sometimes, when you rewatch a film after not having seen it for a long time, it makes a totally different impression on you than it did the first time you saw it. Of course, the movie hasn’t changed; it’s you who’s changed") written in prose so awkward, it’s possibly satire (“Tears dripped down onto the letter like warm, salty drops of rain”). Even the postman’s beloved cat, who gains the power of speech, ends up being prim and annoying. The narrator ponders feelings about a lost love, his late mother, and his estranged father in a way that some readers might find moving at times. But for many, whatever made this book a bestseller in Japan is going to be lost in translation.
Jonathan Livingston Kitty, it’s not.Pub Date: March 12, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-250-29405-0
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Flatiron Books
Review Posted Online: Feb. 16, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2019
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