This latest from bestselling Gould (The Best Is Yet to Come, 2002, etc.) is—well, indescribable.
A mother’s little ghostwriter digs up family secrets galore.
Tracey Sullivan, peppy research assistant for a Miami TV newsroom, has big dreams of writing bestsellers, but not much spare time. She’s gotta work for a living, even though she has a rich boyfriend. Brian Rutherford Biggs III is fun, virile, and unbelievably good-looking, with the “swept-back profile of an aerodynamically-designed hood ornament.” And he just bought a killer boat, with “aerodynamic Euro-styling and a swept-back radar arch.” Brian’s one cool breeze, all right, though down-to-earth Tracey wonders if he’ll ever introduce her to his parents. Meantime, there’s sex and booze. But does this book have a plot? It certainly does. And it revolves around the as-yet-unwritten memoirs of bitchy B-movie star Urania Vickers, who hasn’t delivered the promised manuscript to Greenleaf Books, a publisher recently been absorbed by one of those hydra-headed, multinational conglomerates that doesn’t give a whistle about authors or fine literature. Just the bottom line. Heartless bastards! The plot thickens faster than stale tapioca in the Floribbean sun: Tracey has to pay the mortgages on her father’s property after his mysterious suicide, and a subsidiary of her boyfriend’s financial empire is calling in the notes. Really heartless bastards! Poking around in Dad’s papers reveals a mysterious family link to Urania—can this washed-up movie star actually be her mother? Tracey jumps at the offer of big bucks to ghostwrite Urania’s book-to-be. Trailing after the bejeweled movie star to innumerable glamorous international locales oughta be a blast. And maybe, just maybe, mommy will love Tracey again. But not so fast. There was an identical twin sister, brain-damaged in an accident, who pretended to be Urania and caused no end of trouble. Not even being shut up in the tower of Urania’s villa on Santorini has cured her. Gee whiz! Which twin is which? Will Tracey’s real mother please stand up?
This latest from bestselling Gould (The Best Is Yet to Come, 2002, etc.) is—well, indescribable.Pub Date: Oct. 7, 2003
ISBN: 0-451-21047-6
Page Count: 352
Publisher: NAL/Berkley
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2003
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
BOOK REVIEW
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