A familiar story made new by the empathetic main character and an authentic rock ’n’ roll universe.
In Anderson’s novel, a musician rehabilitates himself and has one last go at success, culminating in an appearance at the Grammy Awards.
At the Grammy Awards in 1997, Zack Fluett, keyboardist with the band Cultural Wasteland, makes headlines when he punches his co-writer and lead singer, Lark Dray, in the nose, breaking his hand in the process. The novel toggles back and forth in time, cataloging the events leading up to the punch and Zack’s post-Grammy fall from grace and his eventual, song-by-song rise to a position of respectability in the music community once again. We see Zack at various key moments in his life: meeting Lark at a party in 1991 and forming the band that will eventually become Cultural Wasteland; his marriage to Claudia Rankin, a publicist whose Philadelphia high-society upbringing is at odds with Zack’s childhood, spent on a ranch in Billings, Mont.; his building a recording studio at his home outside Aspen as a way of getting reacquainted with his muse. The framing device for the story is the Grammy Awards broadcast in 2008, where, a decade after his last infamous appearance, Zack finds himself nominated for song of the year and reckoning with the demons from his past. An entertainment lawyer, rock musician and record label owner, the author writes knowingly about the music scene. His story is as old as rock ’n’ roll itself—a cautionary tale of how sex, drugs and rampant ego can torpedo a career. What redeems it is the wit and honesty with which Zack narrates his story and the author’s eye for detail, as manifested in his faux discographies, Billboard charts and newspaper articles that begin every chapter. Although the ending is pat, there are enough jagged edges for this rock novel to qualify as the real deal.
A familiar story made new by the empathetic main character and an authentic rock ’n’ roll universe.Pub Date: April 4, 2013
ISBN: 978-0989025119
Page Count: 358
Publisher: West Butte Books
Review Posted Online: May 7, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2013
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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