Gossipy roman-Ö-clef about the duel between the visionary founder of an upstart California computer company and the fatuous, guilt-ridden mainstream marketing executive who wants to steal the company from him. That technology journalist Hutsko worked with former Apple chairman Jim Sculley, and that the fictional Via Computer in this snickering comedy of business manners is a dead-ringer for Apple, make it tempting to equate Sculley with his fictional counterpart Matthew Locke. Indeed, the opening passages seem to be a thinly disguised rerun of the boardroom coup staged by Sculley that ousted Apple founder Steven Jobs, depicted here as wealthy, idealistic, but socially naive Peter Jones, whose obsessive attachment to a balky handheld computer he wants to be the Next Big Thing distracts him from the management problems plaguing his company. But Hutsko’s late-’90s setting differs dramatically from Apple’s in the ’80s, when Sculley took over. Here, the Internet is a familiar, all-too-easily accessed medium where Locke’s maimed wife Greta can indulge in virtual sex with a pseudonymous lover, while Locke sends unencrypted e-mails to William Harrell, the megalomaniacal head of the IBM-like International Computer Products. The deal that binds Locke to Harrell is a scheme to merge Via Computer with ICP, so that Harrell can wrest control of the computer industry away from Microsoft stand-in PCSoft. Even if this made sense, Hutsko’s rationale that business is a game played badly by petty guys who can’t find satisfaction in sex, society, or family does not compute: by the time Jones finds a substitute father figure in ousted ICP chief Byron Holmes and leads an assault to take back his company, the narrative has lost its momentum. As is often the case with thinly fictionalized tell-alls, the true details about sex, money, and management incompetence add up to somewhat less than a powerful story. Occasionally titillating, mostly stale insider-stuff. (Author tour)
Pub Date: Jan. 18, 1999
ISBN: 0-312-86872-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Forge
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 1998
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles...
Sisters in and out of love.
Meghann Dontess is a high-powered matrimonial lawyer in Seattle who prefers sex with strangers to emotional intimacy: a strategy bound to backfire sooner or later, warns her tough-talking shrink. It’s advice Meghann decides to ignore, along with the memories of her difficult childhood, neglectful mother, and younger sister. Though she managed to reunite Claire with Sam Cavenaugh (her father but not Meghann’s) when her mother abandoned both girls long ago, Meghann still feels guilty that her sister’s life doesn’t measure up, at least on her terms. Never married, Claire ekes out a living running a country campground with her dad and is raising her six-year-old daughter on her own. When she falls in love for the first time with an up-and-coming country musician, Meghann is appalled: Bobby Austin is a three-time loser at marriage—how on earth can Claire be so blind? Bobby’s blunt explanation doesn’t exactly satisfy the concerned big sister, who busies herself planning Claire’s dream wedding anyway. And, to relieve the stress, she beds various guys she picks up in bars, including Dr. Joe Wyatt, a neurosurgeon turned homeless drifter after the demise of his beloved wife Diane (whom he euthanized). When Claire’s awful headache turns out to be a kind of brain tumor known among neurologists as a “terminator,” Joe rallies. Turns out that Claire had befriended his wife on her deathbed, and now in turn he must try to save her. Is it too late? Will Meghann find true love at last?
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles (Distant Shores, 2002, etc.). Kudos for skipping the snifflefest this time around.Pub Date: May 1, 2003
ISBN: 0-345-45073-6
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2003
A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.
Pub Date: July 11, 1960
ISBN: 0060935464
Page Count: 323
Publisher: Lippincott
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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