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OUT OF MY SKIN

Name: OUT OF MY SKIN
Author: John Haskell
ISBN: 978-0-374-29909-5

by John Haskell ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 10, 2009

A premise that could prove provocative and funny in a short story turns tiresome when stretched into a novel.

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A metafictional narrative from Haskell (American Purgatorio, 2004, etc.).

This short novel concerns a writer from New York who has transplanted himself to Los Angeles (the author’s bio informs that he splits time between the two cities) and who apparently has the last name of “Haskell.” The writer takes an assignment to write a feature article about a Steve Martin impersonator, and he becomes so intrigued by the process of inhabiting another’s identity that he starts impersonating Martin. Haskell proceeds to cover well-trod territory, offering meditations on identity in a city where everyone seems to be pretending to be somebody else. The writer meets his girlfriend after she pretends to be a photographer to capture his interest. But it may only be his Martin dimension that attracts her. His thoughts keep returning to examples of actors who transformed their identities, including the married Charles Laughton, who disguised his homosexuality, and Marlon Brando, who pretended to be a youthful motorcycle rebel when he was 35. We get it: Hollywood is illusion, a place where a New York writer can transform himself into someone else. “I’d detached who I was from the web that had organized my world,” he says, though it becomes increasingly more difficult to sustain interest in the first-person narration when the “I” is less a coherent self than a cipher.

A premise that could prove provocative and funny in a short story turns tiresome when stretched into a novel.

Pub Date: Feb. 10, 2009

ISBN: 978-0-374-29909-5

Page Count: 224

Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2008

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

- BOOK REVIEW
THE COMPLETE BALLET
by John Haskell

- BOOK REVIEW
AMERICAN PURGATORIO
by John Haskell

- BOOK REVIEW
I AM NOT JACKSON POLLOCK
by John Haskell

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BETWEEN SISTERS

by Kristin Hannah ‧ RELEASE DATE: May 1, 2003

Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles...

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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

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

- BOOK REVIEW
THE WOMEN
by Kristin Hannah

- BOOK REVIEW
THE FOUR WINDS
by Kristin Hannah

- BOOK REVIEW
THE GREAT ALONE
by Kristin Hannah

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TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD

by Harper Lee ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 11, 1960

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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.