An entertaining but sluggish saga.
Old Hollywood liberates a transgender woman in this historical adventure.
Short of stature, slight of frame, delicate of face, and lilting of voice, Joey Elliot, a 22-year-old man living in Glendale, California in 1935, often gets bullied, even by his own father. Seduced by a gay lothario, he moves to Los Angeles where he works at a flower shop and becomes a fixture at gay orgies. He escapes this rut when he delivers flowers one day to the head of Crown Pictures, where he startles everyone with his uncanny resemblance to Lana Montague, a starlet who became pregnant and quit the industry without finishing her debut film. Joey saves the production by redoing some of Lana’s scenes. Indeed, he does this so convincingly that he’s signed to a contract as actress “Claire Rambeau” and fed into the studio’s star-making machinery, complete with glamorous makeup, hair weaves, and lessons in womanly deportment. Reveling in “dresses swishing and heels clicking” and the appreciative attentions of straight men, Claire realizes that she’s really a woman and proceeds with hormone treatments. Overshadowing her transformation, however, is her fear that her secret will be exposed to the public—and to Jeffrey Alexander, the man with whom she’s fallen in love. As Bishop’s (Friends, 2018, etc.) giddy novel celebrates Hollywood’s power to turn dreams into reality, it often feels like a transgender version of Singin’ in the Rain, with piquant scenes of moviemaking procedure from costume-fitting to the staging of fake dates for publicity photos, all played out in screwball repartee (Jeffrey: “We have a connection of some kind and I want to explore it….Like Stanley and Livingstone!” Claire: “So I’m Africa, now?”). Unfortunately, Claire is a domineering but bland heroine who’s effortlessly good at everything, and the overstuffed, overcomplicated narrative fixates on talky scenes of her getting makeovers, shopping, and discussing contract minutiae. The supporting cast exists mostly to marvel at Claire’s beauty and talent, and to dry her tears. There are a few intriguing characters, though, including a hard-boiled studio fixer, and also scenes of real drama and pathos, as when Claire’s mother confronts the changes in her child’s life.
An entertaining but sluggish saga.Pub Date: July 25, 2017
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 758
Publisher: Time Tunnel Media
Review Posted Online: Nov. 3, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.
Are we not men? We are—well, ask Bigfoot, as Brooks does in this delightful yarn, following on his bestseller World War Z(2006).
A zombie apocalypse is one thing. A volcanic eruption is quite another, for, as the journalist who does a framing voice-over narration for Brooks’ latest puts it, when Mount Rainier popped its cork, “it was the psychological aspect, the hyperbole-fueled hysteria that had ended up killing the most people.” Maybe, but the sasquatches whom the volcano displaced contributed to the statistics, too, if only out of self-defense. Brooks places the epicenter of the Bigfoot war in a high-tech hideaway populated by the kind of people you might find in a Jurassic Park franchise: the schmo who doesn’t know how to do much of anything but tries anyway, the well-intentioned bleeding heart, the know-it-all intellectual who turns out to know the wrong things, the immigrant with a tough backstory and an instinct for survival. Indeed, the novel does double duty as a survival manual, packed full of good advice—for instance, try not to get wounded, for “injury turns you from a giver to a taker. Taking up our resources, our time to care for you.” Brooks presents a case for making room for Bigfoot in the world while peppering his narrative with timely social criticism about bad behavior on the human side of the conflict: The explosion of Rainier might have been better forecast had the president not slashed the budget of the U.S. Geological Survey, leading to “immediate suspension of the National Volcano Early Warning System,” and there’s always someone around looking to monetize the natural disaster and the sasquatch-y onslaught that follows. Brooks is a pro at building suspense even if it plays out in some rather spectacularly yucky episodes, one involving a short spear that takes its name from “the sucking sound of pulling it out of the dead man’s heart and lungs.” Grossness aside, it puts you right there on the scene.
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.Pub Date: June 16, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9848-2678-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with...
Talk-show queen takes tumble as millions jeer.
Nora Bridges is a wildly popular radio spokesperson for family-first virtues, but her loyal listeners don't know that she walked out on her husband and teenaged daughters years ago and didn't look back. Now that a former lover has sold racy pix of naked Nora and horny himself to a national tabloid, her estranged daughter Ruby, an unsuccessful stand-up comic in Los Angeles, has been approached to pen a tell-all. Greedy for the fat fee she's been promised, Ruby agrees and heads for the San Juan Islands, eager to get reacquainted with the mom she plans to betray. Once in the family homestead, nasty Ruby alternately sulks and glares at her mother, who is temporarily wheelchair-bound as a result of a post-scandal car crash. Uncaring, Ruby begins writing her side of the story when she's not strolling on the beach with former sweetheart Dean Sloan, the son of wealthy socialites who basically ignored him and his gay brother Eric. Eric, now dying of cancer and also in a wheelchair, has returned to the island. This dismal threesome catch up on old times, recalling their childhood idylls on the island. After Ruby's perfect big sister Caroline shows up, there's another round of heartfelt talk. Nora gradually reveals the truth about her unloving husband and her late father's alcoholism, which led her to seek the approval of others at the cost of her own peace of mind. And so on. Ruby is aghast to discover that she doesn't know everything after all, but Dean offers her subdued comfort. Happy endings await almost everyone—except for readers of this nobly preachy snifflefest.
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with syrupy platitudes about life and love.Pub Date: March 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-609-60737-5
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2001
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