Not bad as a concept, but this Hollywood roman à clef never comes to life.
From second-novelist Goebel (The Anomalies, 2003) a dull-edged satire about an entertainment conglomerate that tries to put the pain back into artists’ lives.
Foster Lipowitz, CEO of IUI/Globe-Terner—in charge of the IUI Internet company Terner Bros. Movies, Terner Bros. Music and subsidiaries, plus Globe Books—is the founder of the New Renaissance Academy of Kokomo, Indiana. His goal: “We will attempt to seek out and develop the polar opposite of the hedonistic millionaires who have been entertaining us and shaping our asinine culture. We will encourage our artist not through rewards such as money, fame, and sex, but through deprivation.” One of the first of the 457 prodigies enrolled is Vincent, born when his mother was 15 (father unknown) and named after a song by Tha Dawg Pak, which was a sampling from a NOFX song, which was a cover of the Don MacLean song about Vincent van Gogh. By seven, Vincent is one of the few dozen chosen for the “tortured artist” track. As his “manager,” he draws Harlan Eiffler, a former music critic and tedious philosophizer (“Death is huge to me”). Vincent’s sorrows multiply as Harlan poisons his dog, his mother disappears after giving birth to a brain-dead limbless baby (the result of her drug use), and Harlan burns down his house. At 16, Vincent falls in love and writes a song that’s recorded by the reigning Latin diva. Harlan pays his newfound love to leave the country, and Vincent turns out enough songs in a month for an album, including one that becomes number one in the country. Moving to California, he writes the screenplay for a successful remake of The Wizard of Oz. On his way to stardom, the suffering piles up: tuberculosis, suicide, alcoholism, syphilis. Then, at a decadent party, he meets his mother, who spills the beans about New Renaissance and Harlan.
Not bad as a concept, but this Hollywood roman à clef never comes to life.Pub Date: Oct. 27, 2004
ISBN: 1-931561-77-X
Page Count: 250
Publisher: MacAdam/Cage
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2004
BOOK REVIEW
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
Britisher Swift's sixth novel (Ever After, 1992 etc.) and fourth to appear here is a slow-to-start but then captivating tale of English working-class families in the four decades following WW II. When Jack Dodds dies suddenly of cancer after years of running a butcher shop in London, he leaves a strange request—namely, that his ashes be scattered off Margate pier into the sea. And who could better be suited to fulfill this wish than his three oldest drinking buddies—insurance man Ray, vegetable seller Lenny, and undertaker Vic, all of whom, like Jack himself, fought also as soldiers or sailors in the long-ago world war. Swift's narrative start, with its potential for the melodramatic, is developed instead with an economy, heart, and eye that release (through the characters' own voices, one after another) the story's humanity and depth instead of its schmaltz. The jokes may be weak and self- conscious when the three old friends meet at their local pub in the company of the urn holding Jack's ashes; but once the group gets on the road, in an expensive car driven by Jack's adoptive son, Vince, the story starts gradually to move forward, cohere, and deepen. The reader learns in time why it is that no wife comes along, why three marriages out of three broke apart, and why Vince always hated his stepfather Jack and still does—or so he thinks. There will be stories of innocent youth, suffering wives, early loves, lost daughters, secret affairs, and old antagonisms—including a fistfight over the dead on an English hilltop, and a strewing of Jack's ashes into roiling seawaves that will draw up feelings perhaps unexpectedly strong. Without affectation, Swift listens closely to the lives that are his subject and creates a songbook of voices part lyric, part epic, part working-class social realism—with, in all, the ring to it of the honest, human, and true.
Pub Date: April 5, 1996
ISBN: 0-679-41224-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 1996
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